


Elegies Part II: Words for the Fallen

by useyourlove



Series: Elegies [2]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Dollhouse, Jossverse
Genre: Crossover, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-23
Updated: 2014-08-22
Packaged: 2018-01-26 06:07:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 38,402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1677578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/useyourlove/pseuds/useyourlove
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Buffy and Spike have decamped to New Orleans with a mysterious prophecy of Apocalypse hot on their heels. But they can weather another little Apocalypse right? Wait... right?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote the majority of this in 2011, at the same time as [Part I](http://archiveofourown.org/works/261355/chapters/409071) and Part III. I had just ripped through the entirety of Whedon's works for the first time, I was a slave to canon (by which I mean, I took the comics as legit, although I now would rather ignore them (and only S8 existed)), and I was a glutton for strange angst. So, reading it now, after like seven more viewings of BtVS, it feels a little strange and OOC to me. But it is what it is and I'm loath to change it. The basic crux of this entire series is that all of Whedon's shows take place in the same universe. The main point of this series is for there to be porn and angst (as far as I can tell.)

_Their lot forbade: nor circumscribed alone_  
 _Their growing virtues, but their crimes confined;_  
 _Forbade to wade through slaughter to a throne,_  
 _And shut the gates of mercy on mankind,_  
\--Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, Lines 65-68 by Thomas Gray (1751)

* * *

 

They stalked through the night, both natural predators, although strangely allied. Spike was convinced that when they went patrolling together they had a far higher rate of success. If anything sensed a Slayer it was bound to run, but sense a Slayer and a vampire together and the thing would be caught so off-guard it would get itself killed. Or perhaps stop by to see the slayage. Or maybe even try and help the vamp in dire straits. When they found out that vampire wasn't a Slayee and that he was, in fact, _helping_ the Slayer--well, by that time they were already screwed.

He loved to watch her work. He loved to watch her move through the night like an animal on the hunt. He loved the way the moon lit portions of her face and dappled others. He loved the color of her hair in the night, and the scent of her wafting back to him on the breeze as she raced ahead into the darkness in pursuit of their prey. He loved the rhythm of her breathing during a fight, the simple economical choreography of her movements when she was on the prowl, even before she managed to corner the thing she intended to kill. He loved the relish she took in some kills, and the Hemingway-esque nihilism she seemed to get from others. In short, he loved her and everything about his undeath in that very moment. Patrolling with her was a thrill akin to sex. The only thing better than patrolling was fighting her one on one, but Spike had always had a thing for Slayers that bordered on the erotic anyway. The fact that fighting by her side got him nearly as hot as fighting against her wasn't going to be news to anybody, and so he let the feeling rest in his chest and knew he didn't even need to bother voicing it.

They were chasing what seemed to be a pack of vampires, but they kept splitting, scattering, and regrouping through the crowds so that it was impossible to tell. Some of them were fairly obviously too fast to be anything but demonic. Others seemed to be nothing more than human. The boiling masses of people against the bright Saturday night fluorescents was disorienting--so much unfettered desire setting chaos free all around them. She kept shooting glances at Spike over her shoulder anytime she would catch sight of something particularly disconcerting or suspicious as she shoved her way through the crowd.

Once she stopped stock still, such an expressions of "what the fuck" plastered on her face that she simply waited for him to catch up before continuing to tail their charges. He could feel his silent heart singing, watching her, but the more he watched her the more uneasy he grew because of her uneasiness. This wasn't exactly the straightforward "kill the baddies" that he'd been looking for. This place was too damn weird for that. Maybe he should've chosen one of those places with no sort of mythology at all. Things were always so much less complicated without a bunch of prancing ponces with a Prophecy.

"What's going on?" she said.

"Give us a kiss, love," he said, slipping his hands over her hips and offering up his lips. She dropped a soft peck on them at least for the sake of keeping up the show. They were supposed to be two lovers meeting out on a date. "And I haven't the slightest damn bit of a clue. I think the humans and the vampires keep mixing themselves up."

"They know we're tailing them."

"More than likely."

"Why are they helping them? Why would they help vampires? That's just--"

"Think of where you are love. And look around you. This district turns into a veritable goth underground after dark. Over half of these vampire clubs are entirely human."

"Like blood bars?"

He kissed her forehead and brushed a piece of hair behind her ear. "No, love. Like humans dressed up in funny costumes pretending to be vampires. This is New Orleans. You've got to think like you live in an urban-fantasy homo-erotic romance."

She slid her hands around behind him, gliding them into his back pockets and giving his ass a squeeze with such force that it would probably leave a bruise. She had leaned into him, her face tilted up to his, a silly little grin plastered on her face, before she pulled back slightly, eyebrows drawn down. "Wait, you mean I don't?"

"Well, maybe not so much the 'homo-' part. Everyone in our crowd is going to be thinking that way around here. Better get used to it quick or we'll be in trouble."

He had started calling the supernatural "our crowd" when they were out in public. It was pretty easy to fit in if you just acted like a total angsty outcast and wore black. And they managed to have both things down pat when they put their minds to it. To all passersby, it looked like a fairly innocent little blonde chick had gotten herself mixed up with a less than savory biker boy--and in this part of town at this time of night there wasn't anything particularly unusual in the scene.

Buffy pulled back to herself, letting her arms drop, realizing that they had entirely forgotten what they were supposed to be doing and that all the vampires they’d been tailing had managed to slip away into the night. As far as Buffy could tell, there were plenty more in the general area. At least they were in the right spot to start.

"You wanna drink?" he finally said.

"Yes please, but I'd rather dance."

"We can do both." He laced his fingers in hers and pulled her down the sidewalk towards one of the clubs, the sign overhead in neon hot pink flashing the name in neo-gothic overtones. The windows of the place were hung with velvet and so was the long entrance hallway that Spike led them up. The bouncer looked at them dubiously, studying their I.D.s particularly hard. Buffy tried to look as sixteen and hopelessly in love as possible. She made her eyes wide and her smile full of sap and a sort of hopeless romantic longing. She apparently passed the test since the bouncer started picking at the corner of her I.D. like he'd be able to peel the picture off if he tried hard enough. She simply kept trying to channel herself when she was in high school. Spike's brow darkened enough that she figured she was doing a damn good job.

Grumbling, the guy handed back their cards. Buffy made sure to smile prettily at the man, beaming California sunshine, before turning the blinding smile to Spike who frowned severely. His displeasure, at least, was unfeigned. He yanked her roughly into a corner and she quirked such an eyebrow at him that he knew he was about two seconds from having his ass handed to him on a platter.

"Wanna cool it with the manhandling?"

"You cool it with the Angel."

"The what?"

"Angel. You're all dough-eyed and disgusting like when I first met you. I--"

"I wasn't thinking about Angel."

"No?"

"No. I was thinking about when I first met you."

"And you got all... all... wilty like that?"

"I was imagining what I'd tell myself if I could go back in time and have a conversation. I was imagining my reaction then if I'd known the things I knew now. I probably would've staked you then and there."

"So why the stupid look on your face?"

"I know the dreams I used to have about you then."

He was interested in _that_ particular bit of information.

"Yeah?"

"And you're _not_ hearing about them."

He leaned in, looming above her, whispering so close to her ear that the sound was barely more than the breath he used to speak. "Not even later?" She felt a shiver run up her spine. People kept shoving past them coming and going to the point where she let Spike back her against the wall just to get them out of the way. She figured they must be in the hallways that led to the bathroom or something. It was dark and it was stiflingly hot, and hung in the same tacky hot pink velvet as the rest of the place and she knew that they were putting on a damn good show at a lover's tiff. Mostly because they had started out pretty close to having one. _Seriously?_ "That's ‘Angel-face?’" He was getting more ridiculous every day. Although, she considered, letting him play the violently jealous lover in their little charade was probably reawakening more of his old behavior patterns than either of them wanted to think too hard about. Then again, so was being the poor innocent little school girl torn from her family and friends to grow up too soon at the hands of an evil fiend.

"We're working, yeah?” she said, hand on his chest. “And I thought part of the working was staying undercover. You've stolen me from my loving folks and run away to corrupt me, right? Thought I'd put on the innocent and make it look real. And me kicking your ass in a dark nightclub hallway isn't part of making anything look real. Now can we get on with the finding of the vamp nest or whatever the hell it is we're looking for?"

He was painfully hard, straining against his jeans just at the idea that she had had titillating dreams about him when she was sixteen--when he had been trying to kill her on a regular basis--when he would wake up in the night in a sweat and nuzzle against Drusilla until she responded because of the dreams he'd been... right. Work. Focus on the work. Better not to go down those old tracks at the moment. Nothing good could come of those at present.

"Not necessarily nests, love. More like hives. Or guilds even. They've got a strange way about them in New Orleans. They read too much Anne Rice. Or maybe it was like that here before and that's where she got the ideas. I wouldn't know for sure. I never was much with the in crowd anywhere we went."

"Always the fringes for Spike."

"Give us a kiss, love." She reached up and gave him another peck on the lips before she took his hand gently in hers and tugged him out into the club proper, into the middle of the dance floor.

She was sinuous and it was intoxicating. It was more intoxicating than the blood of a junkie. Good god the things she did to him just by moving. He edged up against her in the crowd, undulating with her. They had such obvious claims out on each other that nobody else even attempted to dance up on them. They didn’t even notice. Buffy wrapped an arm around Spike’s waist, pulling him to her as she danced and he ran a hand through her hair.

“See anything?” she said, leaning up to whisper in his ear and scrape the lobe between her teeth just for good measure. He closed his eyes, letting his head roll back.

“I see a Slayer.”

“Where?” she whipped her head around, looking for one of her girls. When he giggled she turned back to him, smacking him lightly on the chest. “Jerk.” But her little smirk said otherwise. She turned in his arms, ass undulating against him, one arm slung backward and to run her fingers through the hair at the nape of his neck.

She really was way too into this “torturing Spike in public” thing.

“That guy,” she said.

“What guy?”

“That one, there. To our left?” He was trying not to be distracted by that smoldering look in her eyes. She was enjoying torturing him. That was her way. And yet she still expected cogency? She was a cruel woman.

“Right,” he said, spotting the young man in a watered silk waistcoat with impecably kept dark hair. He was almost supernaturally pretty. Which is probably what Buffy had picked up on. “What about him.”

“He’s acting funny.”

He quirked an eyebrow at her.

“Funni _er_ ,” she clarified.

“Yeah,” he said, his voice low and not quite caring, full of that lusty lilt that always signified an interest in more important things. Like just exactly how the Slayer was brushing against him at the moment. “Does this conversation have a point, love?”

“He’s not a vampire.”

He cocked his head to the side. “I’ll give you that. He’s not a vampire.”

“What is he?”

“Human, I expect.”

“But--”

“Some vamps have their pets,” he said, leaning in close to her ear and enunciating every plosive consonant when he added “ _pet_.”

“Watch it,” she said, rolling her shoulders to rid herself of the chill that ran up her spine.

His hands tightened around her hips and pulled her closer to him, holding her against him as she worked her body on the floor. “What exactly am I watching?”

She pointed at the place where the guy had just disappeared through the crowd.

“Ah,” he said. “Yes.”

She was out of his arms before he realized what was happening, his hand in hers once more as she towed him through the crowd of wildly dancing people and made her way to the exit that the man had presumably disappeared through. they came out in a dingy little back alley with a nice cul de sac before it narrowed down to one tiny space between the two buildings behind the club. The nicely dressed perfectly coifed man was there, standing behind the dumpster and apparently making some sort of deal.

Buffy walked up to him, brazen as you please, and tapped the man on the shoulder. “Excuse me,” she said. “But I’m lost. We’re looking for the--” she socked him in the nose so hard that he fell to the ground, hands cradling his face. “Skeezy vampire nest you work for.”

“Ow, my nose!” he cried out. “What the hell, lady!”

“Love?” Spike had his hand on her shoulder, trying to calm her.

“Come on,” she said. “We can do this the easy way or we can do this the painful way, and I’d rather not waste any on you tonight. Tell me about the vamps you work for.”

“Lady, look,” he said, holding his bloody hands out to her in the moonlight as if in supplication. “I don’t know what you’re talking about and I think you broke my nose. Can we just--”

She had the most maniacal laugh when she wanted to. It made Spike shiver, reminding him just how eerily perfect the First’s rendition of Buffy had been. He didn’t like to think of it and wrapped his hand around her forearm. She tried to wrench it away and shot him a look that he quickly quelled with one of his own--the one that said “you’re getting out of hand.” She softened, relaxing, her face still glaring with distrust.

“Look,” Spike said. “The bint’s crazy. Sorry mate.” He held a hand down to pull the gentleman to his feet. “She’s got these wild notions of vampires and blah blah blah. Cut her some slack, will you? She’s had too much to drink.”

She punched him on the arm much harder than necessary and the resultant “ow!” and glare the Slayer received seemed to somehow reassure the young man who took Spike’s offered hand and stood. When he was on his feet he stared at his bloodied hands before pulling a handkerchief out of his pocket and wiping them delicately on it.

His head seemed to catch as if it were on a swivel and he looked hard at Spike for a moment before he leaned to whisper. “What brings you to our fine city, good sir?”

“Me? Taking the love for a vacation. She needed it,” he said, indicating Buffy behind them.

“Is she truly in the dark?”

Spike shrugged. “Easier that way.”

“I can tell you but little, sir. You must know that. I am sworn to my coven in secrecy and would be slain for my insolence should I tell you.”

“That’s all right, s’all right. We won’t be here long enough to cause a ruckus. Just on vacation, we are. Don’t mean to disrupt anything. She, uh. She thinks she’s a Slayer.”

The man’s eyes widened. “Oh, she does? She _isn’t_ is she?”

“Don’t be absurd!” he laughed his way through the syllables. “Even I’m not stupid enough to bring a Slayer to New Orleans.”

Buffy stood, arms folded and toe tapping behind them the entire time they were having this apparently highly secretive and important discussion. She waited a few minutes more while the two whispered feverishly before she cleared her throat and Spike turned to look at her, shooting her a wink that the man couldn’t see. They wrapped up their conversation and Spike let the guy walk back into the club.

“So?”

“So what?”

“What was that all about?”

“The kid didn’t know anything. Least of all anything he could tell us. And, by the by, beating the shit out of a vampire’s pet human is a good way to get yourself killed. And don’t give me that saucy look--they’ve got different rules here. There are too many of us to not be organized. You’ve got to learn the system before you can take it down, love.”

Her arms were still crossed defensively across her chest.

He stepped forward one step, his body doing that come-hither sway-y thing that had always turned her on. He stepped right into her personal space and threw out a pouty little lip. “Slayer wants to slay, does she? Got the urge, love?”

“Do you want me to hit you or are you just really stupid?”

He grabbed her hips and pulled her against him, that same look of ecstasy taking over her face, amazing him--even now--that he could put it on her face just by touching her. He crashed his lips down on hers. “Go ahead and hit me.”

She wrapped herself around him--arms, legs, everything completely surrounding him on all sides. Slayer overload was his favorite state of being.

She pulled back, breathing hard, the two of them balancing carefully without even thinking, as if this were some extension of their fighting--as if it were a dance.

“Can’t I kill things?” the soft pleading note of a foiled child was in her voice.

He sighed heavily and ran his hands down the curve of her waist. “All right, all right. We’ll find something for you to kill.”

“Good,” she said, nodding her head completely self-satisfied. “After this.” She dove back in, capturing his mouth in a searing kiss and he wholeheartedly joined in.

 

*

She walked into the room, naked except for a plain white pair of panties that was riding up one side of her bum. He let himself enjoy the view.

“We’ll go back, right? To San Francisco?”

She put her knee on the bed, using it as a springboard to flop across his chest with a meaty “smack!” She felt her cheekbone bruise against his bones and sighed contentedly. She seemed more and more worried about going back--more and more resigned to the fact that they had truly left. That there was no one for her anymore but the screwed up vampire sprawled naked across the bed.

“Sure, we’ll go back. We’ll stay here a couple of months and then go back. They got coffee shops everywhere, if that’s what you need, right?”

She didn’t shrug, but she did the equivalent which was rolling to the side just enough that she had a place to scrawl invisible pictures on his chest with her finger. She lay across his body like a regal sash.

“I don’t think I’m supposed to be alive,” she mumbled. “Ha!” as if she’d heard what she just said. “Hell, I _know_ I’m not supposed to be alive. Slayers aren’t supposed to live long enough that they have to work to get by in the world, I think. They set it up that way to begin with. You live, you fight, you die before you graduate from college. Or high school in some cases. You’re not really supposed to come back.”

“The girl’s family took care of her I expect. At least around my time. Before too. Took care of her until she was married off. Or, like you say, dead.” His fingers were picking up the ends of her hair and letting it fall back down her shoulders in a cascade. He watched the lamplight glint off the strands. “Probably wasn’t such a trial.”

“Maybe you’re supposed to live with your Watcher. Like a pet. Or a sugar daddy or something. Like they’ll keep you fed enough and clean enough and rested enough that you can go out every night and kill baddies. Seems like that would make sense.”

She had that broody look again. That little crease beneath her lip and just above her eyes that always indicated she was about to cry. Not the track to get her thinking on, Watchers. Not for a long while.

“I don’t have a Watcher, anyway,” she said testily. “Not like it matters.” He could hear how tight her throat was and, not knowing if she’d rather have the comfort and cry herself out on his shoulder or if she’d prefer to stifle the impulse and pretend it never happened, he opted for just stopping everything he was doing and resting one hand on her shoulder and one on her hip.

“I’m your Watcher.”

She laughed with a wet snort of amusement through her tears. “I wish he were around just to hear you say that.”

“What? I’m a good Watcher. I keep you fed, and clean, and rested, yeah? Tell you where the baddies are. Do those funny ritual things.”

“--Run away to San Diego for prophecies and not even remember them when you get back.”

“Hey!” mildly outraged. “Not fair. He wouldn’t remember either.”

She sighed, snuffling a bit. “I wish he were here. I wish he even could give me such a disapproving look while I was flopped out naked on a vampire.” She was quiet then, and still.

He felt the warmth of a few tears plopping against his skin before she wiped them away angrily as if furious that they had appeared without permission.

“I oughta be dead,” she finally said.

“Yeah.” He clutched her to him, trying desperately to say everything in his head but not having any proper words to say it with. Some of those feelings didn’t even have words.

She took that long final breath that always indicated the end of the tears and he let her loose. A little anyway.

“So,” she said finally. “How was your day?”

“Slept. Watched the telly. Had my breakfast.”

“Ready for action?”

“You’re ready for bed.”

“I work afternoons for a reason, you know. If I don’t have to get up I can stay out all night.”

“That’s not the kind of ‘bed’ I was talking about.”

He won a devious little grin.

“Floppin’ on me all starkers. New form of torture you’re perfecting?”

“Is it working?”

“Oh, yeah. It’s working.”

She straddled him, breasts level with his eyes, and ran her hands up his arms, holding his wrists in one hand above his head.

“It’s bloody brilliant.”

 

*

They had found their way back to the same place where they had first cornered the poor kid in the alleyway. There were few other leads and a lamentable lack of any solid information that would lead them to the vampire nests. The graveyards were so sparse on dustable opponents that Buffy was getting antsy. Spike had offered at least twice to have a spar to keep their instincts sharp, but both times they had ended far less fighty and far more grindy. There wasn't anywhere else they could think to look but the apparently vampire free vampire bars, and their one solid lead had been in the terrible neon one.

They gyrated around the floor. Neither one of them minded this particular aspect of their lame  
excuse for an undercover operation. And, truly, they blended in without effort, both in their dark clothing and with their less than savory attitudes. They oozed sexual desire around the dance floor. Buffy was flowing slowly to the heavy beat of the Eurotrash that was playing and Spike watched appreciatively from as far away as his arms would let him get, encircling her waist. She turned in his embrace, brushing her round ass against him as she danced, and he clamped down around her, moving with her, enjoying the feel of her overheated body in the dim nightclub. One of her arms came up behind her, running through his hair. They were a bit more effusive than they usually were in public which, Buffy had to admit, was incredibly liberating. Pretending to be someone else while still being themselves had its perks.

Spike dipped his head running his lips lightly against her neck, not out of place at all in the vampire obsessed atmosphere. She felt the flat of his teeth pressing into her skin and she moaned, her other hand going to his arms and hanging on. All the while, Spike kept his eyes peeled, scanning the crowd for one of those flighty little cronies like the kid they'd accidentally beat the crap out of last time. Or, well, not accidentally. The little idiot had had it coming. Who was Spike to call off the Slayer when she was in such a mood?

He ran his tongue across the red mark he'd left, feeling her blood pulsing just beneath her skin. God how he wanted her. These missions were growing more and more involved simply because it became harder and harder to concentrate on what they were actually supposed to be doing rather than getting wrapped up in each other. They were almost teasing, trying to one up one another to see just how far they could push each other in public. Although, he had to admit, sex on a nightclub balcony pretty much took the cake. He wasn't sure he'd even try to top that one. Not anymore.

He decided that the traditional meaning of the term "love bite" would have to do--no use going all bumpy and scaring the locals shitless. No matter how much they said they worshipped vampires, measly humans always did tend to grow terrified the second they saw a real one in action. He suckled at the skin of her neck as if he were truly draining her dry, but without breaking the skin.

She melted against him, hands clenched in his hair, and he felt a particularly hard yet covert elbow to the gut. With a small scrape of his teeth against the deep purple hicky he was leaving in his wake, he released her neck with a small popping sound and pressed his lips against her ear.

"Ow."

"Focus. Do you see any?"

"No. Got distracted. There's this girl, you see--"

"There's one."

She leaned her head back against his shoulder, cradling his arms to her where they snaked around her waist, and she nodded gently with her head in the direction of a mousy teenage guy who was up on the second floor.

"So there is." He let his tongue out just enough to lick in the crease where her ear met her skull.

"Stop that," she didn't sound too enthusiastic. "We've got work to do."

"You gonna chase another zit-faced kid with low self-esteem into the back alley and beat the living daylights out of him?"

"Aaand, you're never going to let me forget that, are you?"

"You can bribe me off the subject."

She turned in his arms, leaning up to just touch her lips to his. Tease. "Takes a bit more than that, love."

"We've got work to do. Beat zit-faced kids now. Make out later."

She unfurled his arms, wiggling deftly away from him, hanging on to him by his fingers again as they wound their way over to the staircase that led to the balcony above. Where they were promptly stopped by a huge burly bouncer.

"Sorry, can't let you up there."

"Why not?"

"Private party. Invitation only."

"Private party on the balcony where everyone can see them?" she quipped back, exasperated. The man just shrugged.

"I know what I know, and all I know is that's a private party and you don't have an invitation."

"And how does one go about getting an invitation?"

A heavily eye-linered girl walked up then, baring the side of her neck with great pride and showing a ragged looking still oozing bite mark. He stepped aside with relish and let her pass. She clamored giddily up the stairs.

Buffy quirked an eyebrow at Spike and he smirked back ever so slightly. This was just too easy.

"If I get an invitation will you let me upstairs?" she said.

"They don't just pass them out for free, you know. You've got to know the right people."

"Oh, I can get one. Come on, lover," she said, tugging Spike away by the fingers. He shrugged at the bouncer as if to say "What's a guy to the do?" And the huge man shot him a look of sympathy as Spike let Buffy yank him away through the crowd like a naughty child being put in time out. She was headed for that little bathroom alcove again--it was one of the few places dark enough and private enough to get done what needed doing. Neither of them could believe how unbelievably simple it was. It was like it had fallen into their laps.

She pulled him around the corner and stopped short so that he slammed into her, pressing her backwards against the wall, one hand on either side of her head. Her eyes were hooded and dark staring up at him from beneath her lashes. Her lips were parted, panting, excited already by the prospect. She flipped her hair around to the front of her right shoulder, offering up the spot that she had said was only his. His eyes were drawn to the bare expanse of perfect neck before him. She was pure innocence when she was like this, which was always a shock to the system once you knew what lay beneath. He figured maybe that was why she was such a damn good Slayer. She could put on whatever hat she needed to get the job done. At present, apparently, she wanted to put on the vampire-drone hat. And he was more than happy to oblige.

"Bite me, dummy."

"Just a bite?" he said, rubbing his thumb along the red scars from where his last bite had just healed over. He tilted her head to the other side, tracing his fingertips over the mottled purple skin where he'd deliberately placed the hickey he had given her over top of the multitude of other vampire bites. She had to be the most bitten Slayer in history to still be alive. "Or can I have a little taste?"

God, he loved when her eyes got dangerous like that. She grinned like an imp. "Slayer Bar is open for business at the moment. Better hurry before last call."

She tilted her head back the other way, apparently not ever wanting him to have to bite behind others. She had the sweetest little quirks.

He closed his eyes and thought of the blood flowing through her veins, feeling the steady pulsating pump of it beneath his fingers and he let his desire take over. His face went bumpy, fangs elongating, and she watched, studying the change intently as if memorizing it to play over and over again in her head. It wasn't like she'd never seen a vampire change--hell it was a regular part of her nightmares to be talking to someone like a normal human being and then their visage morph before her eyes and turn into an all out death-fest. Fights in her sleep usually resulted in bruising the shins of anyone sleeping beside her (which he reminded her on a regular basis). But this change--this was Spike. And she had already memorized every single bit of Spike except this part. This part she knew--this part she could see when she closed her eyes and thought about it. But the change itself, the face itself, every ridge and bump and strange protuberance she wanted to impress into her memory. The particular shade of his eyes (which remained closed, as if he were fighting for control while still trying to let himself go) and the length and point of his various demonic teeth. She wanted it all. She wanted every bit of him. And she wanted to hold him in her mind forever.

He was leaning in for the kill when she grabbed his face in both of her hands and stopped him. He opened his eyes and found her scrutinizing him. She ran a finger along the ridges, trailing her thumb along his scar like she so often did. He wondered what she thought about when she did that, because all he could think of was just how strange life could be sometimes. She smoothed her fingers through his slicked back hair.

She was staring into his eyes and he felt himself starting to shake.

"Wha'--"

"Sh." She pressed her finger to his lips, still staring deeply into his eyes. They were such a strange color, especially in the deep dark shadows of the hallway. She couldn't decide if they were a brilliant yellow or a deep shining gold. She found she didn't care, leaning in and pressing her lips to his. He kissed her back hungrily, and when she pressed her tongue into his mouth and ran it along his sharp teeth, pricking it and letting him suckle the tiny wound just enough to make him growl that deep feral growl she loved so damn much, he had to pull back before he lost control.

"Buffy--"

"Sh. Invite me to the party," she said, tilting her head sideways once more and proffering the delicately scarred tissue of her neck. The bites clustered above her collarbone like angry pink pearls.

He pressed a kiss to her lips, then one on her jaw, trailing down into the hollow of her neck and then her collarbone before he landed where he wanted to be, razor sharp tips of his teeth pressing against her skin. He felt her pulse racing. She tugged at his shirt, pulling it untucked and running her hands up under, feeling the sleek muscles of his back tensing and relaxing at the touch of her hands.

He bit down, piercing her skin. She sucked a sharp breath in between her teeth, hissing when she let it out, and then groaning against him as he began to pull long draws from her neck.

"Not too much, Blondie Bear. I've still got to, _oh_."

She felt the rumble of his chuckle in her very bloodstream as he took a sharp suck, piercing her skin with his front teeth and knowing he was making it sting. Sweet and silent revenge for that accursed nickname. And a particularly vivid invitation, he presumed. Apparently the worse the wound the more loved you were by your dear vampire master. As the sweet taste of her blood flowed across his tongue and coated his throat, he thought that might be a game they'd have to try later. Or maybe soon. And in public. Oh, the gratification.

"Spike," her voice was weak and he pulled away quickly, licking his lips and quickly shaking off his vampface.

"Sorry, pet. Was trying not to get carried away. Harder than I remember."

"Wipe your mouth," she said, pointing at the corner of her own. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, looking at the smear of blood that came off on it. "You got it," she said. "Let's go party."

"You're the only one with an invitation. I'll wait downstairs. Stay--"

"In view at all times. Because I'm a poor wittle girl who can't handle herself around vicious bloodsucking fiends."

"Well, since your preferred course of action is one of two things--"

She swatted at his chest, playfully and just for show as a goth girl squeezed behind them with wide eyes and a blush on the way to the bathroom.

"Seriously, Buffy--" she tried to stand and wobbled, he caught her by the shoulder, pressing her firmly back against the wall. "You all right?"

"I'm good, I'm good." She took a deep steadying breath, trying to fend off dizzyness. She used his chest to steady herself. "Got my invitation," she said. "Let's go." He grabbed hold of her wrist and pulled her up short.

"Buffy, listen to me. New Orleans is different. It's not like Sunnydale or L.A. or anywhere we've been before. They don't have nests. Drusilla and I got run out of town by these... these _hive_ -like things. Almost like Guilds or…or hierarchies. I don't know how to explain it. They've got lackies and they've got lesser vamps, and they've got--"

"Spike, seriously? I'm the Slayer. I can deal."

"You're not invincible," he said softly, just barely over the thump of the music streaming down the corridor from the dance floor.

"Look. I'm just going up the balcony to get a looksie. If there's trouble that I can't handle I give you full permission to come rescue me like a white knight on a white horse in a white fairy tale. Ok?"

She held his eyes for a moment before using his chest as a springboard to push herself off down the hall and around the corner. He trailed behind her, hurrying a few steps to catch up and hold onto her fingers. She dragged him back through the crowd, their hands held high over the mass of dancers so that they were still connected even when they couldn't see each other. They made it back to the bouncer and Buffy offered up her bleeding neck as evidence of an invitation. The man raised his eyebrows, highly impressed, and scrutinized Spike with a suddenly critical eye. He seemed amused by his mussed up hair and clothing, and it seemed the man knew he should have given him a harder look. Buffy probably would've been able to tell a vampire on sight, but the bouncer obviously had rarely if ever seen one in person and had no idea what he was beholding. Lucky thing, or he probably would've made a scene. As it was, he stood aside and allowed her to pass. Spike walked along side the staircase, his fingers still laced around hers, until she got high enough that he couldn't hang on anymore. Sometimes it was fun to play sappy.

She disappeared into the crowd on the balcony and he walked further out onto the dance floor cursing her, moving just enough to the music to not attract any attention whatsoever. His eyes were trained intently on the crowd milling around above. It felt like she was up there for hours, for days. He wasn't worried. He'd catch a glimpse of her every now and then, leaning heavily on a railing or a table or someone's arm (they seemed to be all the more sympathetic and impressed both that she'd been drained to the point of weakness.) It had been nearly an hour since he'd bitten her and he knew he hadn't taken enough for her to still be weak. Not Buffy. So it was mostly feigned once she figured out how to work the crowd. The girl knew what she was doing, he always had to give her that. She made certain to appear in his line of sight often enough that he wouldn't come crashing upstairs to ruin her plots and "help" her as he was so fond of doing--a fault which she often pointed out to him.

It wasn't until a young man came scurrying down the stairs and spoke for a moment with the bouncer, still three stairs up and bending to whisper in the man's ear, that Spike really perked up and began to pay particular attention to what was going on. Because that didn't sit right with the vamp. So he made his way close enough to the staircase that he could at least get a gist of what they were saying. And he didn't like what they were saying.

He milled back out into the crowd, trying to get Buffy's attention without getting any unwanted attention from the rest of her companions. They needed to get out of here and fast.

Which she seemed to understand herself, as she came scurrying down the stairs, her feet working quickly _tap tap tap tap_. She came up just short of the bottom, staring wide-eyed at the entrance to the club. Spike, his back to the door and his hand held up waiting for her to catch it, shot a glance over his shoulder to see what was so disturbing to his Slayer.

The squirrely boy apparently had sensed something amiss with the new girl and called in a few of the demons in charge. Or rather, the demon lackeys.

There were at least four of them, and Spike couldn't see how many more were in the entryway.

"Oh, shit." He felt tiny fingers slide into his hand and squeezed them. "Who did you piss off?"

"What? Me? I didn't do it!"

The music stopped; the entire club stopped; everything seemed to stop completely and they all just stared--the focal point of the entire crowd was Buffy and Spike. They both kept their eyes trained on the huge crowd of vampires in the door, Spike holding up his other hand for her to take. She locked her elbows and slung herself over the stair railing. He lowered her down to the ground with an easy precision that indicated much practice even though they'd never done that particular maneuver before. Every muscle in their bodies said they were ready.

They were surrounded by the vamps. Spike counted them up in his mind--one, two, three, four, five… too many more, well, shit. He drew in a breath and blew it out through his teeth, clucking his lip a few times in the process.

"Buff..."

"We got this."

"What did you _do_?"

"I didn't _do_ anything! I didn't!"

"I knew I shouldn't have sent you up there."

"Sent me up there--Spike, you're getting--"

One of the vamps charged at her and she threw a mighty punch at his nose. He dodged it expertly, swivelling around to aim a blow at her side. The vampire was completely taken aback when a fist landed on his face. He had ignored Spike completely. Buffy whacked him on the back of the head, cracking his skull and knocking him out, the vamp falling to the ground in a heap.

"You're getting _so_ conceited."

"Conceited?" Spike grabbed the next vampire charging them--a woman in full vamp face-- and twisted her around, holding her arms behind her back so Buffy could bruise the woman's brain on her skull. "How am I conceited? You're the one--" he dropped the vampire to the ground atop the other.

" _I'm_ the one? Me? You're the one who keeps trying…to…rescue me," she said, punctuating the sentence with two punches and ending it with a mighty kick to the gut, sending her opponent flying backward into two of the others and knocking them all to the ground in a heap. "Like I need rescuing!"

"I'd just like to point out to you," he had one of them in a headlock, pummeling the brains out of him. "That there are at least fifteen vampires out for your blood."

"Is that counting you?"

"Har har."

They had taken down seven or eight of them and the fight paused for a brief moment, the two of them regrouping, backing together shoulder to shoulder, arms dropped to their sides but at the ready. Buffy rolled her shoulders and Spike shook out his hands, then cracked his neck. Buffy had a scraped knuckle that he could smell even above the sweat and cologne of the club and a bruise was darkening across her cheek.

She caught a twitch out of the corner of her eye and turned. She dropped her shoulder into the charging vamp's stomach, sending the girl flying as her momentum carried her over. Spike shoved her onto the same pile as the others.

"Who teaches these guys how to fight? Nobody?"

"You gonna complain?"

"Yes. I wanted a fight not a slaughter."

"Only you would come into a vamp bar looking for a fight."

"S'why you love me," she grinned at him from across the carnage and he couldn't help but smile, because they both knew that it was entirely true.

They were down to three now. Just three vamps left and they had managed to take down he didn't know how many. There were vampire carcasses everywhere, unconscious. He hoped beyond hope that she remembered not to dust any of them, as he'd had a long conversation with her after that last alley encounter about how dusting vampires in New Orleans would get you into a gang war quicker than you could blink your eye.

She downed one, knocking the other to Spike and taking the one who was obviously the leader for herself. She fought. Punch, punch, block, swiping kick, and she went flying backward into the staircase, her head catching on the metal bars of the rail. Spike knocked out his victim and headed in Buffy's direction.

"Slayer!"

Which froze her opponent in his tracks. He looked at the little blonde girl closely for a moment, then decided she must be one of those pitiful girl-child Slayers that he'd been hearing of and went back in for the kill.

Spike had the man in a headlock, pulling him backward and knocking him flat on his back. Spike stood over him, slicking his hair back and holding down a hand to pull his girl to her feet.

"You all right?"

"Ask me later," she said, cracking her knuckles and taking a deep careful breath.

"All right, I will then."

The last vampire stood up, quite a bit more adept at fighting than any of the others had been. Perhaps this one was one of the masters or whatever the hell it was that they called the leaders of their hive-thingies.

They fought in a circle, over under and around the stairs, Buffy gingerly avoiding the metal so that she wouldn't bust open her own head.

"Spike," she called, and he knew what she wanted--knew exactly what she wanted, so he positioned himself perfectly to receive the vamp, a move that they had done a hundred times since they'd known each other, grabbing him as Buffy pulled the stake from her pocket, and shoving the vampire forward before he could even think--before he could process that she was about to dust the damn creature right here in front of all of these vampire crazies. Eyes wide in horror, Spike tried to grab him back mid-fall, but the man landed on the stake in Buffy's hand, eyes wide and mouth open. He pulled himself up Buffy's arm before he managed to dust, eye-to-eye with her when his face turned entirely to ash.

Her knees were shaking, and Spike ran forward to catch her, but she didn't fall. She simply shook out her hand, giving it a good hard look in the dim light. "Think I got a splinter."

"Buffy..." because he had looked around and seen the horrified faces, heard the screams as the vampire had dusted before their eyes, and he knew that they were about to get a hell of a fight. One they most certainly hadn't bargained for.

"Oh. Crap."

"Door, the door. Get to the door," Spike called over the angry shouts around them.

"Uh. _Yeah_." She took off at a full sprint, crashing into the crowd and bouncing back quickly as they shoved her back into the circle with Spike. Back to back, they circled, looking for a way to get _out_.

It was evident they'd only get out together--one a diversion, the other to clear the space. And there'd have to be a few broken noses involved. Folks could deal with a few broken noses.

They were rushed, barely leaving room for either of them to swing their arms.

A busted nose here, a stomped foot there. Buffy managed to call all their attention. Then Spike was hit with a brilliant idea that should've hit him a hell of a lot sooner than it did. He really wasn't one for the strategy.

He went full vamp face and the crowd stopped lashing out, backing away again. Buffy had some girl in a headlock and was taking far too much pleasure in readjusting her hold on her neck--over and over and over--

"Buffy!"

She stopped, looking around and noticing that they had all stopped as well. She let the girl go and she stumbled back to the crowd, coughing.

Spike walked over to his Slayer, wrapping an arm around her waist possessively from behind. He ran his lips down her neck and licked a swath over the bite he had given her not two hours before. It was still open and had gotten red and sore. She cringed, leaning back against him, realizing what he was doing and not liking it in the least. He lazily let his teeth sink back into the bite and she tried her hardest not to cry out, stifling it in a little grunt. He bit down, the blood flowing again, and she did squeal then, a tiny little noise in the back of her throat. Their newfound audience was enthralled. Buffy took a deep steadying breath, enduring the pain so they could get out of there. Preferably without anyone dying.

She felt his cock behind her, pressing into her ass and growing erect. The sick thing was getting off on this. On being watched. She would _not_ even _think_ about whether she was too.

Finally, when he'd suckled at her long enough, he let go with a smack of his lips, placing a gentle kiss on the lightly bleeding wound.

He tugged at her, pulling her toward the door as she tried to shake her head clear. She was muzzy, her vision going in and out. Since they met no resistance she figured that had done what he had intended and staked some sort of ceremonially territorial claim to both herself (which she pushed from her mind simply because it made her skin crawl) and to the public dusting they'd just performed. These people seemed to be more than willing to accept gang violence and erotic bloodplay as an explanation for everything that had happened.

"Come on," he said, practically carrying her now.

"I'm trying. Drain me, why don't you." She wasn't quite sure she was holding up her head. She could see the door ahead of them, so very close.

"Yeah, well, I did. Sorry 'bout that."

"If you pick me up and carry me out the door I'll go all limp and we can make a dramatic exit."

"This wasn't dramatic enough?"

"Just in case you didn't catch it, that was code for 'I'm about to pass out.'"

"Oh. Too right." He paused for a moment and swung her up in his arms. Just as she said she would, she went all limp, one arm trailing down behind them and they made a very dramatic exit indeed.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Editing something you wrote three years ago is like editing something written by someone else entirely. Lots of weird angst, and strange sentence syntax. I've left it all for you to enjoy.

She plunged her stake into the heart of one, moved on. Plunged again, moved on. The only vampire left was the one she had come with. She swiped at the dust that had settled onto her pants in a gray-brown film.

"Blegh."

"That's the last of them I think."

They were in one of the cramped alleyways in one of those creepy above-ground cemeteries. They'd gotten the tip off from skulking around various places (much less conspicuously than they had on their first try) that there was some sort of ritual sacrifice taking place here that night. And so they'd come out to see. The sacrifice hadn't even shown up yet when Buffy and Spike had dusted the whole gathering. It was simply a matter of waiting around for the unwitting victim to get dragged in so they could rescue whoever it was. Something seemed backwards about that.

"So, when do you think they'll get here?"

Spike shrugged. "Who knows." He rested his hands on one of the nearby sarcophaguses and hauled himself up on top of it with a spry leap. He dug around in his pockets until he found his pack of cigarettes and tapped them repeatedly against his hand before pulling one out, snagging it with his lips, and just letting it hang there, unlit.

She sighed heavily before pulling herself up beside him and drooping slightly. "I hate this place."

"Why?" he mumbled around the cigarette.

"It's all hot and humid and creepy and the people here are worse than the vampires. You can't kill people."

"Well," he plucked the cigarette from between his lips as if it were lit and he needed to exhale. "Yeah, you can. But you wouldn't be you if you did."

She gave him a sort of sideways glare--half contemplation, half exasperation.

"The people are the hard part, yeah?" he asked.

"Yeah. So?"

"So change their mind. You've gotta help them see things from a different perspective."

"Yeah. That's really going to work out well. 'Hey, everybody. I'm the girl who sleeps with a vampire, but they're evil. You don't want to be one! Let me take away all your hope and light and shared community and throw you back into your dark depressing pit of lonely despair!"

"All _right_ , all right. Easier said than done, I'll admit." He swiped the cigarette back between his lips. "And you're not allowed to quit sleeping with me just to make a point."

"Uhn," she groaned, her face truly looking pained. Sometimes when he looked at her he marveled at the fact that she didn't crack under the strain. Sometimes when he looked at her he could see her cracking and just wanted to hold the pieces together until she could do it herself. Sometimes he wondered…no, he didn't wonder. He knew that Slayers sought out death. He knew that they grew to hate life and living it and taking on the responsibility of the whole world. He knew that Buffy was different. But he also could see the hairline fractures.

She leaned slightly, tilting until her forehead came in contact with his shoulder. He pulled back just enough to take his arm from between them and wrap it around her shoulders, pulling her in closely.

"Spike?"

"Hm?"

"My neck's all crooked."

"Sorry," he let go and she straightened up, cracking her neck one way and then the other.

"Oh," she said, and he looked up to see what she was seeing. "Goody. They've made it."

Two vampires, a man and a woman, were walking down the aisles toward them, a young (human) man going before them. The man wasn't tied, bound, gagged, or any of the other common markers of kidnapping and being an unwilling victim. But he was indeed being led to his death by two cold-blooded killers.

Buffy hopped down, Spike landing beside her. They blocked the narrow aisle standing two abreast.

"You got a permit for that sacrifice?" she quipped.

The three stopped, confused and staring at the two blondes in their way. “And you are...?"

"Hi," she said. "I'm Buffy, the Vampire Slayer. And who are you?"

"Slayer!" the woman said, her voice a mocking laugh without even having to actually laugh. "What's a slayer to us? The Old Ones of New Orleans are protected by most ancient and dark--" her sentence ended in a shriek as she disintegrated into a pile of dust, revealing Spike behind her.

"Sorry," he said. "Got bored. You were saying?"

"Selena!" the man-vamp cried out, rushing to the place where the woman had fallen, only to be confronted by Spike's stake. He stopped suddenly and backed away warily. "You'll pay for that," he said. His eyes were wild and flitting around like a trapped animal. The human sacrifice had disappeared and was no where to be found. "You'll pay. I swear on Selena's dust, you'll pay."

"Really? Do you take credit cards?"

Buffy rushed at him, and he deflected her, grabbing her by the arms and swinging her around to bring her cracking down against one of the tombs behind him. Her arm glanced against the corner, tearing through her skin in just the right place that blood began to pour relentlessly from the wound.

"Slayer blood," the man said. "I've always heard it's like a gourmet buffet. How about a little taste?"

He swooped for her where she was crumpled on the ground, cradling her arm, but didn't make it far before Spike had grabbed his shoulder and spun her around.

"Buffet's closed," he said. "No one tastes the Slayer except for me."

"What are you?" the guy said. "Her lap dog?"

"Pretty much," he admitted, stunning the guy so much that he didn't even try and block the punch Spike launched at his nose.

He went reeling, smashing against the very same sharp-edged tomb of doom that Buffy had hit. He was on the ground, stunned and trying to shake the stars from in front of his eyes when his vision finally cleared and he was face to face with the Slayer.

"He's not warm enough to be a lap dog," she said. Her stake drove straight and true through the vampire's heart and he morphed to dust before bursting into a pile.

Buffy stood, moving away from the mound of dust and holding her arm out as if it had betrayed her. Spike could tell that it must still be numb from the shock. She really wasn't doing too well on the blood loss front lately. He felt largely guilty for whatever difficulty she was having at the moment.

"No!" the human-sacrifice-man cried out, stumbling out stunned from behind one of the mausoleums. " _No!_ " He fell to his knees in one of the dust piles, his hands digging into the particles, pulling up giant handfuls of it and holding it close to his face, his tears dripping into the dust and making a strange stewing mud. "How could you!" he cried at them. "How could you?"

Buffy held on to her profusely bleeding arm. "How could I what? Save your life?"

"They were going to... to turn me."

"They were going to kill you."

"I would have been one of them! I was to join them in their mission. I was to become one..."

Spike had moved to her, shoving her hands out of the way and ripping her sleeve off completely before using it as a tourniquet and tying it around her arm. He was remarkably efficient at first aid and trauma care. She simply gave herself over to him until he was done.

"You--" the man said, spotting Spike. "You _are_ one. And yet you kill your own kind! How _could_ you? How could _you_ \--knowing what it is... knowing what it means…how could you do it? How could you end the existence of one who is to live forever? How could you defile that sacred and eternal right to one of your own kind."

"I'm gonna be honest with you, mate. It's really not all it's made out to be." He dropped his hand on Buffy's shoulder, warning her off of the subject, holding her back. She really couldn't seem to get the hang of the way these people thought. He wasn't sure if it was just that they were in New Orleans--which he always remembered as full of cliques, confrontations, and groupies--or if it was part of the way things had gotten because of Harmony and her ilk. It didn't much matter. He knew who wore the white hats. It seemed like it was becoming his job to remind her of that.

"How could you do it?" He sounded sad now--defeated and utterly lost rather than with that vehement incredulity that he'd had before.

"Because I'm the Slayer," Buffy said, her voice so full of her old righteousness that it caught Spike off-guard. "That's what I do."

She turned from the man, who looked as if he was about to collapse in the piles of dust and weep buckets of tears all over again. She walked down the aisle between the sarcophagi and headstones, head high, back straight, shoulders back. She was her old self again, which made Spike's heart sing. He followed her, swaggering, when they both heard the tiniest of whispers from behind them.

"Murderer."

*

“Spike?”

“Hm?” He was mostly asleep. It really wasn’t fair to try and talk at 3 in the afternoon. Sure he had the crazed and deranged sleep cycle of a psychopath, but when he was asleep he was good and dead to the world. Well... more than usual. Like... actually dead... whatever.

“If I ever get sick or hurt or something, and I’m gonna die--will you kill me?”

He was awake then. “What?”

“Will you kill me? It’s stupid to just--”

“I’m not killing you.”

“Why not? Who better to kill me than you?”

“Buffy, there’s no way in this or any alternate universe that I’d kill you.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “Not even as a favor? To me?”

“How would killing you be a favor?”

“Because ‘here lies Buffy, defeated by flu’ is an epitaph to die for,” she quipped sarcastically.

He sat up, running a hand through his hair, then mussing it up and flattening it again. “You want me to kill you why again?”

“You could add me to your list.”

“After how many years, you think I’d still want to do that?”

“You’re kind of a badass, Spike.”

“All right, so I’ll kill you if you’re so weak with flu you can’t even breathe. Then I can say I’ve done three Slayers. Of course,” his hand was trailing up her thigh. “I can say that now, then, can’t I?”

She slapped his hand away and he shook it, stinging. “Ow?”

“Look, I’m serious. I’m not going to live forever. I’m not going to live long at all, the way this is going. That’s part of the job. Spike, listen.” She leaned forward, intent on getting him to understand, but then she sighed and sat back on her heels. “It’s stupid. It’s stupid to care. Nevermind.”

“No, wait.” He took her hand in both of his, searching her eyes with a questioning look. “You want to die all honorable.” He sounded enthralled, amused, somehow shocked and touched all at once. “If I killed you, you’d go out with style. Classic Slayer death. You... Buffy.” He ran a hand down her face, fingertip trailing her cheek. “I won’t let you.”

“You won’t let me have you kill me?”

“I won’t let you die.”

Her face was deadly serious. “You’d better.”

“Oh! Oh, _god_ no! No, no. Learned that lesson long ago. But I’ll keep you alive until you’re old and wrinkly and leathery and not even Slayer strength can keep you walking upright. And everyone will think you’re my lecherous great-grandmother and--”

He was stopped in his tracks by her glare.

“And, then I’ll kill you. Grr.” He made a claw with his hand to emphasize his evilness.

“I don’t want it to be anyone... or anything. Ever. But I’ve got to die. And you’re the only one I’d...”

He pressed a finger to her lips. “Shh, love. I get it. Don’t let’s talk about it anymore.”

She shook her head lightly, throwing off his finger. He could see the unshed tears shining in her eyes. “I wish... I wish you could grow old with me. But that would probably just get us both killed even faster.”

He was so touched that he didn’t even know what to say. There wasn’t anything _to_ say. He ducked his head, trying to hide his own shining eyes. He looked back at her and couldn’t help himself any longer--he dove in, kissing her tenderly, softly, attentively. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders and hung on him, the same sad urgency in her kisses.

She rolled him onto his back, her kisses still soft, her hands exploring, and he let her do it. She tugged his shirt out of his waistband and yanked it over his head. She slid down him, never breaking contact, drowning him in the scent of her, in the feel of her warmth and silky drag of her hair against his skin. Her mouth was like a flame trailing down his torso. When she made it to his jeans, she pulled at the denim with her teeth and he threw his head back, concentrating as much as possible on anything but her. She set about unbuttoning his jeans and setting his cock free of the constricting fabric.

There was nothing wanton or sexy about this. What they were doing--it was desperate and it was lonely and it was painful. She wanted him. She wanted to be close to him, to be inside him. She wanted to be one and to never have to give that up. For even that briefest of moments during orgasm, time disappeared and she was eternal with him, together on their little cloud. She slid her hand around his cock and squeezed.

He sucked in a hiss of breath between his teeth. "Buffy--"

"Shh," she shushed. And then she leaned in, tongue out and headed for his cock. The image was too much for him and he closed his eyes, arm thrown across his face like a melodramatic silent movie star.

"Oh, god," he said, her tongue meeting his cock and giving it one good solid lick from base to tip before she surrounded him with her lips and went down. He could feel himself hitting the back of her throat as she took him in as deep as she could. She was so warm, so hot, that he was always certain just contact with her skin could raise his whole body temperature back to living level. Starting with his cock and working its way out.

She pulled back, sucking all the while before she ever so slowly worked her mouth back down. He looked then, seeing her gorgeous blonde hair, her sweet little mouth wrapped around his cock. He closed his eyes again against the image.

She was working her tongue around him somehow in a way that was so delectable that he was groaning and grunting and calling out her name without even realizing he was doing it. He was screaming loud enough that Buffy was sure they could hear it in the rooms next door. And probably above and below them too. But she just didn't give a damn anymore. She cupped his balls in her hand and gave them a gentle squeeze, running her finger between them.

He came without warning, shooting into her mouth. She handled it gracefully, only gagging slightly, choking somewhat before she buckled down and swallowed his seed in greedy gulps, drinking him like life's blood. He panted, trying to come back to himself as she crawled up his body, wiping her mouth on the back of her hand and collapsing beside him, her cheeks still shining from the tears that had left trails across her skin.

"Your turn," he finally said.

"No," she said, holding him off.

"No? Who the hell says no?"

"Just hold me."

He settled back down, wrapping his arms around her where she had nestled against his side, holding her to him tightly enough that there was no way she could ever escape without a serious ass-kicking occurring.

"I feel like an ass," he said finally into the silence.

"Will you not feel like an ass if you get me off?"

"Somewhere in there the logic leads to sex. And yes, I would feel better."

"So kiss me."

She looked so vulnerable lying there in his arms, her eyes turned up to his and pleading, begging and sad and desperate all at once. He tipped her lips up to his with a thumb gently caressing beneath her jaw and he kissed her. He let his hands work under her shirt, peeling it over her head with plenty of help from her, and unclasping her bra and sliding it down her arms. She rolled onto her back, begging him to be on top, to take charge the way that she used to when she was completely lost and just wanted something to take her mind off of life. But that wasn't what she wanted here. He knew what she wanted because his soul ached for the very same thing.

She wrestled with his unfastened jeans, pushing them down past his hips to wrap around his knees as he worked his way through her clothing, divesting her of every bit that was left. He dipped a finger into her, noting with a soft moan just how ready she was. Her sad eyes looked up into his and he felt like his heart was breaking. How many times had he felt like that, looking into those eyes?

He dipped down, kissing her once more, a soft slow tender kiss that she broke away from to sob.

"God," she said, swiping angrily at her cheeks. "Sorry. I hate weepy people during sex." But she noticed his eyes were shining too, that he was just as choked up as she was. She wondered when they'd gotten so incredibly sentimental before she realized that they'd both always been that sappy--they'd just been too mean to each other or too kinky to let it out.

He was hard again, which was one of the few remaining situations when he was more than happy to be a vampire. He took himself in his hand and readied himself at her entrance, sliding into her deliberately and slowly until he had filled her completely. Her walls squeezed around him as she worked them just the way she knew he loved. The way that made his eyes roll back in his head. And they did.

Her hands were on either side of his head, holding him there, studying him. She wrapped her legs around his waist and when he pulled out she tugged him back in, pressing him hard against her clit so that she cried out with a throaty little "oh!"

They moved together, slowly building each other to a climax, hitting just all the cues that they knew so well. She twisted her hips just right, and he worked his fingers around her clit. He ducked in for a kiss and she dug a heel into the small of his back. She tugged at his earlobe with her lips and he nipped at her nose with the flat of his human teeth. They touched on anything and everything they had ever done, anything that had ever made the other one squeal or sigh or scream. And finally, eyes locked and both panting from exertion, Buffy came hard, clenching down around Spike and dragging him with her.

He thought she was catching her breath, breathing the way that she was, until he realized that the tears were flowing again. He just wanted to bundle her to him and never let her go.

“Go to sleep, love,” he said, nose still touching hers, foreheads still pressed together. Her eyes were closed, revelling in the touch of him. She took a deep breath and let it out in a shaky sigh. He tucked her hair behind her ear and ran his fingers through the locks, giving her hair a good pet. His fingertips caressed her skull. “Sleep, love. Calm down, my darling.”

He rolled to her side and she followed, nestling her head against his shoulder. He kissed her forehead, holding her close, adoring the heat of her bare skin on his until her even breathing lulled him to sleep as well.

*

She was alone in the darkness, huddled beneath the rubble. She could hear the Other one, scratching around nearby. It made goosebumps rise all over her skin, sending a shiver shooting up her spine. She felt that she should be somewhere. She was utterly compelled to move, to go to be in this place in the darkness with the terrifying shadows. She had never been afraid of the dark. It was stupid to be frightened of darkness when you could kill everything that was in it. But this darkness made her twitchy. So she hid every time it drew near.

She heard the rustling, a crash, some digging. There was a muffled curse. She cringed, rolling into a crouch on the balls of her feet, at the ready for whatever was coming.

A plank shifted, some rubble skittered down out of the unstable enclave she was in, and she was ready to pounce.

“Wake up,” a voice said behind her. She backed against the wall just to reassure herself there was no one there.

She could just see out of the tiny space she had crawled through the get in here. She could just see movement of the Other one. She could see it coming toward her.

“Wake up.” The voice was louder and she jumped, kicking a plank with a dull thud. The Other stopped and she tried to sit stock still. She tried desperately but she knew that it was coming towards her. She knew it was headed for her. She stood, kicking out busted wood that hemmed her in and ducking out from under the rubble before it could cave in on her.

“Buffy! Wake up!” Her head snapped backwards and she snapped awake, completely disoriented as Spike shook her. Her brow was furrowed intently. “You were screaming, love. What the hell were you dreaming about? You wouldn’t wake.”

“Sorry,” she said, softly. She sat up, blinking, her hand going to her head. “Sorry, I...” she cleared her throat. “Sorry. It was one of those weird dreams.”

“Slayer dream. Seer dream.” Spike leaned his shoulder against the headboard, resting a hand on her thigh. “I _do_ know about these things. What did you see?”

“I don’t know. It’s always confusing, you know? It was all black. And rubble-y. Like some kind of ruin. And there was a thing there. Something in the darkness. I couldn’t see... I was afraid.”

He ducked his head into the curve of her neck, planting a kiss there and nipping at it with the flat of his teeth. “I don’t like that. My girl afraid.”

She felt a shiver run up her spine again and she cringed.

“Never mind about it. They’re just nightmares.”

“I’m not going to just ignore Slayer prophecies.”

“It’s fine. It’s... there’s nothing we can do. I just feel... I mean I feel like I’m supposed to be somewhere else when I have the dream. I feel like I have to go. Like I need to be somewhere.”

“Where?”

“I dunno, I don’t _know_ ,” she cried, hitting the mattress in frustration. “God,” she said. “I just wanna go home.”

Spike had wriggled in behind her, tracing his fingers along her shoulders, planting kisses, finally working his thumbs into the muscles of her back and shoulders until she started to relax. She felt chills run up her spine again, but they were the chills of sudden relief, letting go of the stress and anxiety.

“That’s nice,” she said, leaning forward and pulling her hair around her shoulder to give him better access.

“I’ve been thinking,” he said.

“What about?”

“I think we should sell the car. We’d get a few hundred for it, at least.”

She stiffened against him, back rigid and muscles all knotted immediately. “Sell the car?”

“Yeah, we ain’t using it. We don’t need it. Could use the money for Slayer food,” he said with a low rumbling laugh in his throat as he scraped his teeth against her shoulder. “You wouldn’t have to work. Leave more time for play.”

“If you bite me right now, so help me, I will hit you--”

“Fine, fine,” he said, pulling back slightly.

“Look, Spike,” she rubbed at her nose with the back of her hand before heaving a sigh and turning around to face him. “I don’t know how to explain this. I don’t know... don’t sell the car, Spike.”

“It’s just sucking up money sitting there in the parking lot.”

“Please don’t sell it, Spike.”

“I know I could get a fair amount of cash for it--”

“I don’t _want_ you to sell the car.”

“Why the _bloody_ hell not? We don’t need it. We can walk nearly everywhere we’d want to be or even _need_ to be, and the rest of the time we can catch a bus.”

“Don’t sell the damn car, Spike. I’m serious.”

“It’s just a hassle, Buffy. We’ve got the cops looking into that damn car. The stickers are all out of date.”

“Did you _steal_ that crappy thing?”

“Wha’--? _No_. I’ll have you know, I paid two-hundred quid for that piece of trash. And it performed a hell of a lot better than I ever thought it would. It was cheaper and less traceable than flying or getting on a bus, or--look.” She had sidetracked him. She had sidetracked him _on purpose_ and he’d fallen for it. “Buffy.” He knelt before her and took her hands in his. She wanted to pull away but stopped herself, instead opting for folding her legs up Indian-style on the bed.

“Look, the guy at the junkyard was willing to give me five-hundred for it. Apparently it’s worth more in parts than it is as a piece. Which, I have to say, since the parts all still work admirably and the car itself is a piece of shit--”

Her glare cut him off.

“All right. All _right_. I won’t sell the bloody car.” He dropped her hands and stood, turning around, his hand going to the back of his head. She wondered briefly if he’d always done that or if he’d only started doing it after they put that chip in his head. He dug in his coat pocket, pulling out his cigarettes before he shrugged off the jacket and threw it across one of the armchairs. The breeze rifled the curtains, letting a tiny peek of sunlight through, although the blinds were drawn and it was insufferably dark in the room with only the feeble light of the lamp to illuminate things. The stifling oppression of never seeing the sun was starting to catch up with her. “S’not like we’re ever going back anyway.”

She was up in an instant, whirling him around so she could land a solid punch on his face.

His eyes widened the second before impact, even though--amidst the surprise--there was that expression that said he knew precisely what was going to have before he had said anything. And that he had said it on purpose. Which infuriated her even more.

He doubled over, hands on knees, shaking his head slightly before rubbing the back of his thumb along his nose. It was still there, so he figured no damage done.

“Ow?” he said with such a tone that he was really saying “what the hell” and acknowledging that he’d been hit for his comment all at the same time. He held out his broken cigarette with more indignation than the way he held his nose.

She shook her hand, the knuckles throbbing slightly from impact.

“Don’t say things like that.” Her voice was so small that it cut him deep down to the bone--to the heart. It was like a sharp splintering wooden knife was slipping between his ribs. He stood up straight and held his arms out to her, reaching for her, but she backed away a step, hand up, warning.

“Don’t say things like that. We _have_ to go back. We _can’t_ just aban... abandon them.”

He knew better than to get into this conversation again. He reached for her, his hand wrapping firmly around her elbow. She wouldn’t look him in the eye. Her own eyes were brimming with unshed tears on the verge of falling. She knew if she looked at him she’d see perfect understanding in his eyes. He knew her. He knew her so damn well that it frightened her on a regular basis. Knew her better than she knew herself. He could cut to the heart of things even when she was trying to wrap that heart up in layer upon layer of padding and armor and death and misdirection. She didn’t want to see that look right now. She didn’t want him to understand. She couldn’t take it if he understood.

He nodded a soft sideways nod, understanding it all.

“Tell you what,” he finally said, flicking the utterly destroyed cigarette into the trash can beside the bed. “You get out that cell phone. Dial up one of your chums. Willow, maybe. I’m sure she’d like to hear from you. Haven’t had a good gossip in a long time. Take it outside, go for a good walk, soak up some sunshine. Growing girls need their vitamin D. I’ll get in my beauty sleep and meet you at the cemetery at sundown. How’s that?”

“Are you kicking me out?”

“No. No, god no.” He was exasperated, but his voice melted her right down to her toes like butter in a microwave. It was that tone that used to make her hate him for understanding--for being the only one to understand. But it was the same tone that had _always_ made her love him.

She wrapped her arms around herself, one hand rubbing at her shoulder as if she needed the comfort of someone’s touch but didn’t want anyone touching her. He dug around in her bag without so much as a peep from her, finally coming up with the phone and tossing it to her across the room.

“Come back when you’re finished. Whatever. Get some sun, love. You’re pale as I am. And that’s not good for a girl. Unless she’s... you know... dead. You’ll feel better for it. Voice of a friend, kiss of the sunshine.”

“Do you miss it?” she asked suddenly.

“Miss what?”

“The sun?”

His tongue made a clucking sound as he thought for a moment at the unexpected question. “You know,” he finally said. “I’m not sure I ever saw it anyway. London. Smoke. Fog. Crud. You know the like. Even when I was out in the day I don’t think I ever saw the sun.” He shrugged it off. “Nothing to miss really. Angel had these windows--”

He locked eye contact with her as she finally looked him dead in the eye. She was so raw, sometimes. Those were the times when he was either in for pain or pleasure. Or, as he continually forgot and was constantly reminded, flashes of brutal honesty that were just as cutting as physical pain, whether the honesty was favorable or not.

“Stop knowing me,” she said, part annoyed, part grateful, entirely serious.

He gave a soft shrug. “Always been my curse,” he replied. “No soul-curses for me. Just got heaps of insight to harass Slayers with.”

Nobody else would have caught it, but he caught that tiny smile that turned up the ends of her lips. She held the phone up in the air, as if to say “EXHIBIT A!”

“I’m gonna go call Will. And sunbathe. In tiny clothing.”

“ _Now_ I miss the sun.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings for excessive schmoop and excessive violence.

“These gloves suck.”

“They’re just little plastic baggies.”

“They suck anyway. I’m gonna get this shit all on my hands. And it burns.”

“I can do it myself, Buffy.”

“No, no. You’ll burn your face off or something. It’s easier this way.”

“Don’t get your hair in it.”

“I put it up,” she said, blowing at one of the strands that was too short to make it into the ponytail and kept falling in her face. She took a glob of the gel-stuff that he’d spent the past ten minutes mixing up and smeared it into his hair, working it deeply into the dark roots. She had wandered into the bathroom, wondering what the hell was taking so long and he’d been fairly embarrassed to be caught in the middle of his hair maintenance ritual. She had offered her help and hadn’t been in the mood to take no for an answer.

Something about her fingers running against his scalp made this a far more pleasurable experience than he was used to. She took another scoop of the crap out of the little jar he’d mixed it in and kept running it through his hair. It was more like a scalp massage than a hair treatment.

“Mm.”

“Like that?”

“Mmhm.”

“Dawn was in love with your hair once.”

“My hair?”

“Mmhm. She had a crush on you cuz you ‘had cool hair.’”

“Niblet had a crush on me?”

“Mmhm. She’s the one who told me you were in love with me. Said you wouldn’t notice her in a million years with me around.”

“Stole my thunder, did she?”

“This was immediately before the time you knocked me unconscious with a shock stick, tied me up, and proclaimed your love yourself.”

He grabbed her wrist and pulled her in front of him, her hands splayed out and trying not to get the hair bleach on anything. “Spike!”

“I love you.”

His earnest eyes cut her through and her face softened. “Yeah, well.”

He wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her into his lap, burying his face in her chest.

“You’re getting that crap all over my shirt!” She managed to wriggle free. “Put the shower cap thingie on,” she said, pulling off the plastic baggie gloves and chucking them in the trash before she yanked open the complimentary hotel shower cap and snapped it onto his head, covering his hair while it bleached. He looked like a lunch lady and it made her smirk.

There was a ringing from the other room and her brows lowered immediately. “Weird,” she said. “That’s my phone.”

Something was niggling at Spike’s mind and it most definitely was not the hair bleach. His skull felt tight as if it were squeezing and pinching at his brain, and it was an unpleasantly familiar sensation. At least it wasn’t like an icepick being driven through his skull like that damned chip used to be.

Buffy padded back into the main room, digging through her bag until she found the cell phone. “Weird,” she said to Spike, who had followed her and was standing in the doorway of the bathroom, leaning against the threshold. “The only people with my number are San Francisco people.” She gave him a look and he shrugged. She shrugged too and hit the button on the phone.

He saw it as if it were in slow motion, the way she flipped her hair over her shoulder, the way it cascaded down her back, the way she tilted her head to the side as she raised the phone to her ear. He saw himself as if it were slow motion as well. Him pelting across the room faster than even he could comprehend, the sudden blinding flash of clarity spelling out that the last thing that he wanted to happen in the entire world was for her to answer this phone call and she was already well on the way to answering it. He crashed to the floor on one knee, grabbing the phone from her hands where she was crouched beside her bag and the bed and snatched the phone away. It was making a god awful fuzzy noise sound at a high loud pitch. He pelted it against the wall and it cracked into a million pieces, flying everywhere, suddenly unsalvagable high-tech trash.

“ _Spike!_ ” she screamed after she lowered her arms. She’d flung them over her head to protect herself from electronic bits falling from the sky. “What the _hell_?”

“I...” he honestly had no idea what the hell that was all about. He just knew that it was bad. His head was throbbing as if it were trying to tell him something. God, there was something uncomfortably _there_ that he couldn’t get to. It was driving him mad. “I’m sorry, I...”

Her face was angry, set, but as her eyes studied him it began to soften and finally a small smile spread across her lips.

“Sorry,” she said, trying to wipe it off. “I can’t be mad at you when you’re wearing that stupid shower cap. We’ll... we’ll call Willow later, maybe. On a pay phone. And see if anything was going on.” Her brow furrowed again. “You all right?”

“Yeah,” he said, holding his head. “I’m fine. I’m gonna finish my hair and then go out patrolling, I think.”

She seemed reluctant to want to let him go. “All right,” she finally said. “I’ll meet you at the graveyard. Usual time.”

“Sounds good. You go ahead,” he said, trying to usher her out the door so he could collapse in pain without worrying her. “I’ll meet you there.”

*

“Hey there, Slayer,” the Cockney drawl said behind her and she ducked. The vampire she was fighting took a mighty swing, missed Buffy entirely, and his face collided with Spike’s fist. Spike took the guy’s arm, flipped him onto his back and Buffy drove a stake through his heart with a swift jab. With an agonized noise, he dusted.

She stood, stowing the stake back in her pocket and brushing her hands together to rid them of vampire dust.

“Hey yourself. What’s up?”

“Having fun tonight?”

“Not really. He was only one. Think he was a loner or something. He seemed sort of afraid to be here. Do they stake out graveyards like territorial mountain lions? Peeing on trees and stuff?”

He smirked. “Territories, yes. Pee, no.”

“Oh, well. Seemed plausible.”

“You wanna go have some fun?” he said, voice light as he changed the subject.

“Fun, like killing things fun?”

“Fun like lobbing large weighted objects at wooden pins fun.”

“ _Bowl_ ing?”

“I got a hot tip from an anonymous source. Well... he was only anonymous because I jumped him in the shadows and broke his nose. But anyway, there’s some kind of big meeting going down tonight at one of the bowling alleys downtown. Said that’d be our best bet if we were looking for information or trying to find a tail.”

“I got a lair night before last.”

“I know, you told me.”

“I don’t like it here.”

“You’ve told me that too, love. You wanna go bowling?”

She shrugged, then linked her arm through his and walked beside him like a Victorian lady headed into a dance. “Sure, why not. Nothing better to do around here.”

*

The proprietor gave them both the once over before flopping two pairs of shoes on the counter and sending his minion to retrieve two bowling balls and put them on lane four.

“How many games?”

“We’re just gonna bowl, mate. ‘Til you kick us out.”

“Can give you $20 an hour. Makes the total $27.25. We close at 2.”

“That’ll be fine.” Spike dished out a few bills, tapped the edges on the counter to square them up into a neat stack, and handed them to the man. The guy took them, licked his finger to quickly count through the stack, and then jammed the button and shoved them in the cash register with relish. He counted out the change and dropped it into Spike’s outstretched hand. The vampire managed to cram it in the front pocket of his tight jeans.

“Y’all been bowling before?”

“I know a thing or two,” Spike said. “And the lady’s a fast learner.”

She raised her eyebrow at him and quirked her lips. All night he’d been yammering on about how he knew how to handle these kind of people and she could keep her mouth shut and let him do the talking. Bowling alleys were full of a dangerous sort, he said. Didn’t want to give the wrong impression straight away.

“Well,” the man said. “Enjoy.”

Buffy was making one of those “say one word and I will slay you” faces and he couldn’t help but smirk trying not to giggle. She hooked a finger in each shoe and dragged them off the counter to hang on the end of either arm, glaring all the while at Spike as she followed him to the lane where two atrociously fluorescent balls were waiting for them.

She flopped down in one of the lane chairs as he slapped his hands together and rubbed them eagerly, sneaking up on the ball return and rotating the balls until he could read the weights. He giggled maniacally.

“What?” she snapped, slapping the shoes down on the ground and yanking at her own footwear.

“Nothing.”

This was another one of his jokes and she foresaw incurring physical damage in the very near future. Both of her feet were in those horrible clown shoes (amazingly exactly the right size), and she picked up the other pair of shoes and launched them at Spike’s head.

He blocked one and caught the other, brandishing it back at her. “Hey! Watch it!” He bent to pick up the other shoe and sat beside her, slapping her lightly on the knee with the ball of the shoe as she drew her foot up to tie the laces.

Both shod and ready for action, they stood. She gave him a sharp tap on the ass and he jumped, turning to look at her with an astonished expression on his face. Something weird had gotten into her today and he was dead determined to figure out what it was--and take full advantage of the situation. He pondered the idea of taking her on dates more often--dates that didn’t directly involve killing things as the main event. Normal person dates. Like randy teenagers. He smiled, one of those breathy snickers escaping before he could manage to control it.

“I’ll put our names in.” She plopped down in the swivel chair and began to beep away at the console.

“Don’t put anything stupid.”

“Aw!” she whined. “That’s half the fun! I used to put things like ‘Queen Twerp’ and ‘Monkey Butt’ for Dawn when we were kids.”

“And your mother wholloped you good and proper, no doubt. And wholloping is something I reserve for special occassions and private meetings.”

She scrunched her nose at him in reply, but erased whatever she had already entered into the computer, holding together the tattered shreds of her dignity by muttering under her breath all the while.

He looked up at the screen. It flickered. SPIKE. It flickered again. BUFFY.

“Ready?” he asked. She was sitting demurely in the chair, slowly twirling back and forth to the extent of her planted feet. She waved her hand for him to go ahead.

He pawed at the ball until he had the holes where he wanted them, then he slid his fingers delicately in inside and hauled it up off the rack. He made a big show of just how heavy it was for a moment before the smirky lips and cocked eyebrow of the Slayer pulled into focus. His teeth flashed and he worked his jaw in her direction, eyes full of amusement. He turned to face the lane, adjusting his feet and holding the ball up before him, balancing it with his other hand and coming to stand perfectly still. Buffy leaned her elbow on the console and rested her chin in her hand. She studied him from head to toe, admiring his backside in the those jeans, the taut muscles of his lower back, his shoulders wide and inspiring flutterings straight down the middle of her entire body. The muscles in his arms were tense and sculpted under the skin, the black t-shirt he wore tucked into his jeans showing off everything she could ever want to see, and showing it off to perfection.

He began to move so she decided to throw him off.

“You know, Jonathan once told me to watch out for Southpaws.”

He pulled up short, stopping the momentum of his swing in such a way that he jerked around to shoot her a glare.

“Jonathan?”

“Yuh-huh. When he did that spell that made us all think he was amazing. He said ‘watch out for Southpaws.’”

“Talkin’ about me, was he?”

“Dunno,” she said. “Dunno why it popped into my head like that,” she said, making a waving motion with her hand.

He quirked his eyebrow at her, lowering his chin to ask if she was quite finished.

She made that expansive gesture once more, indicating that he was free to go ahead. He turned back to the lane, holding the ball once more in that perfectly still stance. When he moved this time, she let him go. He took a deep breath, presumably simply to calm himself or out of habit or something. He took a few steps forward like a predatory cat, bent with perfect easy grace, and let the ball go. It slid from his fingers, flying down the lane and hitting its target. A raucous clatter sounded and the pins were tossed into the air as if a bomb had been set off beneath them. When the carnage cleared the lane was empty.

“Bravo,” she said, impressed despite herself. “That was... wow. So you used to, what? Take breaks from your killing sprees to come launch balls at pins with your nutty honey?”

He walked back to her, steps jaunty, and reached out with his finger to give the end of her nose an affectionate little tap. “Jealous?”

“I can do that.”

“Be jealous?”

“Roll a strike.”

He bowed melodramatically, one arm extended in the direction of the lane, the other tucked over his belly in submission. The posture said perfectly “be my guest.”

She stood, bouncing on the balls of her feet, and bebopped up to the ball return, plucking the bright orange monstrosity from the rack and hauling it up with such strength that it practically went flying over her head.

Spike roared with laughter at the stunned look on her face.

“What the hell is this?”

“That nice man at the desk picked for us, remember? He gave your dainty self a ball that ways all of ten pounds. Poor whittle Buffy can’t handle a big girl ball.”

She held it up limply on her wrist, like some god holding up the world. “I’m not above throwing this at your head.”

He held up his hands in surrender, then gestured once more to the lane. She faced it, taking a breath as he had, trying to do the same set of motions, the same internal stillness. She had no idea what she was doing. Oh well. Throw the ball. She took a few steps forward, reached back and--

The ball went sailing through the air, arcing through the sky as if she’d tried to lob a baseball underhanded at a little leaguer. It hit the lane with a resounding THUD that made her wince and all eyes in the house turned to her. She blushed a brilliant pink, flustered, as the ball rolled awkwardly the rest of the way, taking down one of the corner pins and then falling disanimate into the back gutter.

Spike was laughing so hard he was hanging on to the back of the chair.

“You did that on purpose!” she said, charging back at him and jabbing a finger into his chest, hoping miserably to get the dozens of pairs of eyes off of her. He held up his hands once more, this time attempting to absolve himself of any responsibility.

“Wasn’t me, biscuit. Talk to the man,” he pointed over his shoulder with his thumb, trying to indicate the guy at the counter who had mysteriously disappeared. She glared at Spike, mouth all set in fury. Some frilly chick threatening her bad boy boyfriend wasn’t exactly an uncommon sight in the bowling alley at 1AM, so interest in the pair quickly diminished.

“Your ball.”

“What?” she snapped.

“You get another roll,” he pointed once more at the lane behind her, hands still held in the air as if he were in a Wild West stickup.

She swung around from him in a huff, picking up his ball and checking to make sure the heft was more to her satisfaction. “Do they make heavier ones?”

He sat down in the lane chair, studying her from behind much the way that she had studied him. “Not for regulation.”

“Poo, regulation.”

“My thoughts exactly love. Oughta have a super-hero only league with different rules.”

“I’m not above throwing this one at your head either.”

His hand reached out as if drawn and ran down the curves of her side.

“Stop that,” she said, not sounding convincing in the least.

“Fine. Roll the damn ball already.”

She stepped up to the marked place on the boards, lined up her feet, gave herself a little shimmy to get set properly and cocked her elbow into her hip, peering over the ball as if aiming. Then, quite suddenly, she was all in motion, step step launch.

This time the ball didn’t fly halfway down the lane before landing, and it seemed to be going on a more or less straight course. Straight at the other corner pin.

She gave a frustrated little squeal. “I hate bowling!” she said, plopping down beside him with more force than necessary, just to make sure at least some part of her banged into some part of him.

“It’s not all about force, love. You’ve gotta aim. You’ve gotta throw it just right. Half of it’s finesse.”

“Half of it’s a century of midnights with nothing better to do.”

“Hey, there’s some damn good snacking in bowling alleys late at night, I’ll have you know.”

Buffy looked around at their fellow bowlers--greasy bikers in the far corner, a few drunken college kids a few lanes down from them. Her face was clearly questioning his taste in victims.

He uncrossed his legs, dropping his foot back to the ground and using her knee to leverage himself out of his seat.

“I’ll help,” he said. “But it’s going to cost you.”

She smirked. “Somehow, I think I can afford it.” She was sitting on her hands and dangling her feet even though they could touch the ground. She looked positively innocent, and therefore two hundred times as devilish. He traced his hand under her chin, raising her face so that it was parallel with his looking down into her eyes.

“I suppose you can,” he winked. He could see, about halfway down the building, a group of what appeared to be your average men and women enjoying a good liquor filled midnight frolic. She watched his gaze, knowing full well that he had spotted them. Buffy and Spike had found what they had come for. Now to wait for them to make their move. Or to make an opening themselves, if it came to that.

Spike leaned down and placed a tender kiss against her lips. Playing at this disgustingly sappy game in public was kind of fun. A lot more fun than she had ever imagined it would be. Enjoying disgusting sap? Check. She must really be finally growing up. Or maybe she had stopped caring whether she was mature or not. Perhaps that was the mark of maturity.

“All right then,” she said, voice husky and eyes daring. “Show me.”

*

She picked the bone clean with her teeth and then threw it at the table, making a perfect basket in the hot wing bucket and giving a little fist pump. He giggled, throwing back the bottle of beer in his hand and taking a long swig. His arm was draped over her shoulder and she was draped against him, back nestled firmly in his lap. They were quite good at seeming like idiot drunken kids. He dropped a long little kiss in her hair, kissing her once, twice, three times before he brought his lips away again.

“Come on,” he said, trying to shuck her up with his shoulder. “More bowling.”

“No,” she groaned, making a pouty face. “My ass hurts and I’m tired of you winning all the time.”

“Wanna punish me for my wicked cheating ways?”

She grinned despite herself. “How exactly do you cheat at bowling?”

He shrugged and she shifted against him, getting better purchase. “Practice for a hundred years?”

“That’s not cheating, that’s the hard way to go about winning. Who are you and what have you done with my Spikey?” she accused, sitting up slightly and trying to leverage herself with his arm. She caught movement out of the corner of her eye and glanced back up at him. He caught his lip in his teeth and looked in their direction.

The group of average men and women seemed to be bringing their festivities to a close. Spike nodded and Buffy sat up, making sure to use the low cut neckline of her top to the best advantage. She gave Spike a delectably distracting view and arched her neck to the side in a way that was attractive to more than a few of the people present--bloodsucking and human alike. She managed to make it all look like some sort of stupidly drunken stretch.

She leaned into him, whispering in his ear.

“Are they leaving?”

“Soon.”

“Did you catch anything they said?”

“Yes. They’ll be heading to the meeting from here, so we’ll be able to tail--”

The door to the bowling alley burst open, which wasn’t too odd in itself, except for the fact that the proprietor had locked the doors to more customers about fifteen minutes before. The place went silent as all eyes turned to see what the hell was going on. One more raucous peel of ball crashing against pins sounded and then there was dead silence.

A small group of people was swaggering through the front door. Something about them raised Buffy’s hackles and she was immediately at the ready, sizing them up and trying at the same time to figure out what in the hell had her so on edge.

Spike, behind her, tensed as well. His arm was still draped across her shoulder and she seemed to pull him forward as she sat up straighter. No one spoke. Not the manager, not the group of vampires that Buffy and Spike had been tailing all night--not anybody. But that small group of people kept walking.

Quick as a flash of lightning, one of them struck and a fountain of blood spurted from the manager’s partially severed neck. Eyes already dim and unseeing, he fell to the floor in a heap.

Buffy jumped to her feet, Spike in tow. That drew their attention. Both groups were at the ready, both on the offensive, but the newcomers didn’t seem to be sizing up anybody at all. They seemed to be making out the best route of attack. They were blank. They were ruthless. they were....

“Spike--”

“Got it.”

Slowly, Buffy began to take careful strides to the right, the newcomers always before her, keeping her body always facing them. She was making her way towards one of the exit routes--a small set of stairs that led from the bowling lanes down to the front desk and restaurant and stuff. If she could get that route clear, the rest of the people would be able to get out. If she could only get it clear and engage the mysterious group of single-minded killers without drawing their attention to the people she was trying to save.

Spike was doing the same thing, headed for the staircase that was to their left. Buffy's was closer to the door, Spike's was closer to the vampires and the vast majority of bowlers. It was their best shot to have Buffy divert attention and Spike quietly try and herd them all out behind her while she fought. He hoped beyond hope that the plan would work. They had both known exactly what they were looking at when the violence had begun. They could see the looks in the eyes of the men and women and they knew what they were dealing with. They'd both quickly assessed the situation--hell they'd had a backup plan that involved a brawl in the bowling alley anyway. It wasn't exactly one that they spoke of, but they both knew about it. It was easy to modify. Not that they spoke of the modifications. Not that they’d ever had to discuss any of the fights they’d ever been in.

Buffy couldn't tell who they were watching more intently, herself or Spike. So she began to walk faster, taking a lunging stride and speeding up a bit. That got their attention. Good. The little girl is the threat. The tiny little blonde chick is the one who can kick your ass. Ignore the tough looking bad boy with bleached hair and black clothes. He's no concern of yours. I'm the one you want.

She was holding her hands straight down, palms facing backward, trying to keep all the people behind her still. She had a group of eight near her, college students apparently out for a night of beer and bowling. And there was another couple, hopelessly more sappy than she and Spike had been by looking all the more innocent with their puppy love and mini skirts and polo shirts. She wanted them out of here before the carnage began but she knew--she _knew_ that that wouldn't happen. She had resigned herself long ago to battles where not everyone made it. Hell, half the time she was the one who died. But those two--they touched a place in her heart and she was determined that they would make it out of this building alive and without a scratch on them.

She made it to her staircase, stopping just as Spike made it to his.

"Ladies and gentlemen!" she cried, raising a hand up through the air with a few dramatic swooshes before finally holding it there like a ringmaster. "Welcome to Cosmic Bowling! Feast your eyes on the wonders of black lights and fluorescent balls!"

They were all looking at her, now. Their attention was entirely focused on her. She felt the violence in it and it made a chill run up her spine. And another. She tried not to visibly shudder. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Spike desperately trying to herd people toward him and down the staircase with as little sudden movement as possible. People who weren't vampires were fairly difficult to keep moving fluidly. She knew it wouldn't be long before--

There was a nasty squelching crunch and then a gurgle, followed by an absurdly high pitched scream. Spike had managed to sneak two or three of the people past the group and they had took of running for the door the second they made it down the staircase. The fourth wasn't so lucky, called out by the heavy trample of his companion's feet, he was pinned by one of the strange murderers, a hand clamping around his throat so hard that it crushed his windpipe and he staggered there for a one sickening moment, clutching at his throat before he fell to the ground trying desperately to breathe.

Buffy clutched the railing, her hand going out toward the man. "NO!" she cried, her voice much higher pitched than she had ever thought it could go. That pulled them back to her once more. Spike stood perfectly still, eyes glued to the crowd, hands ready and waiting on the railing for the moment when he was dead set on launching himself in front of his girl before all of those blood thirsty buggers could rip out her throat too. He bounced gently on the balls of his feet.

One of the killers broke free, walking slowly towards Buffy. Spike watched, waiting, not wanting to launch too early and call attention to the large crowd of trembling people behind him. Even the vampires that they'd been tailing were cowering, the wankers. They could at least give a hand.

"Buffy..." Spike said, a low warning.

She made a slight move of her hand--a motion completely unnoticed by anyone but Spike, who knew she had heard him. She had a handle on this. Get them out.

He turned back to the mass of people huddled down behind the railing and chairs and tables as if that would somehow save them. He grabbed a man by the collar, lifting him up and shoving him down the stairs. The man stumbled, stopped stock still, and stared terrified at the backs of the butchers, focused entirely on that small blonde girl at the other end of the building. He stood straighter and prepared to bolt.

"Run," an ice cold voice whispered through the stillness, "and I will kill you myself."

He looked around wild-eyed, locked eyes with the terrifying biker dude, and then proceeded to tiptoe towards the door. Spike was shoving another poor soul down the stairs when he first heard the crunch of bone on bone. He turned, not caring what happened to his charges, ushering them down without even looking, watching the fray. "Go, quickly. Don't run," he was whispering to them. A few more made it down the stairs and were on their way to the door.

Buffy went flying, catching on one of the tables and sprawling across it, arching her back just right after the hit so that she slid across and to the floor. She upended the table, huddling behind it for a moment to regroup. "Go!" she shouted to the scared couple, huddling down in a booth nearby. " _Go_!" They stood and ran, calling the attention of her opponent. They were like cats on a laser-pointed--obsessed and easily distracted.

Buffy kicked the table with all her strength, sending it careening into the absurdly strong man she was fighting and knocking him to his ass. With a sickening crack, he hit his head on the rail and didn't get up. The girl screamed and that seemed to send the murderous interlopers into a frenzy. They all spread out, taking marks and pouncing.

Buffy stood, holding her hand out to the college kids. "Come on," she said. " _Hurry_." They all stood. One was cut down instantly by a punch to the chest that audibly crushed her ribcage. She stood there gaping like a fish, blood trickling down the side of her mouth and spattering from her throat as she tried to breathe.

The whole bowling alley went into a panic. The only sound anybody could hear was screaming and the wet meaty crunch of battle.

Buffy was everywhere at once. She blocked a punch, grabbed a leg in mid-kick and sent its owner flying back over the railing. She hit one so hard that she knocked her out onto the slick oiled surface of the lanes and the woman skidded down until she hit the pins with a loud clatter and then stopped, no longer moving.

Something was very wrong with these people.

All around her there was carnage. There were broken bones and busted skulls with their contents spilling out on the floor. She tried not to think about whatever that mess of goo was that she had just slipped in, landing hard on a chair and catching her ribs on a table. She grabbed the edge of the table and shoved it into one of the killers, worked into a frenzy like a chummed shark.

"Spike!" she cried out.

He was at her side in an instant, his hand under her elbow, pulling her to her feet. He launched a punch, occupying one of them while she knocked the man's feet out from under him and then delivered a neck-cracking blow to his jaw with the heel of her gore covered bowling shoe.

"Are they demons?"

"Just kill them!" he shouted back, exasperated and just as overwhelmed as she was. They had managed to kill about half of them, but the ones they hadn't downed were still standing for good reason. They were unbelievable fighters.

Buffy found herself pinned beneath one, the crazed woman's elbow digging into her windpipe. Twist, turn, writhe, and kick as she might there was nothing she could do to dislodge the woman. Not even Slayer strength could help her gain purchase against her.

Someone (something?) knocked into the woman, sending her sprawling over Buffy. The Slayer took her opportunity and grabbed the woman's hands, slinging her upside down and over her head to land with a spine-shattering crack against the edge of the table on her way down.

What had run into the woman was the massive burly man that Spike was losing to.

"Ow, ow, _ow_ " he cried out at every tug on his head. His neck had to be broken by now what with all that muscle tugging on it, but a broken neck apparently wasn't enough to satisfy the guy. He was going to rip Spike’s head off before he was through.

"Spike! Stop moving!"

"I bloody well will not!"

"Be _still_!" she cried again. "Play dead." He did as she said and was dropped like a worthless sack of dung into a heap on the floor.

"Hey!" Buffy called, getting the guy's attention. Unfortunately it got his friend's attention as well. "Try picking on somebody half your size!"

She bobbed her way towards him, ducking the grasping hand and the incoming knee before landing a punch to the guy's jaw that should have knocked him out.

"Damn it," she growled, trying to get a better angle on him when she was caught in back by a heavy blow. She landed on top of Spike who groaned. She tried to breathe, sucking in air as hard as she could but she couldn't gain her wind. "You can stop playing dead now," she said before trying to gasp another gulp of oxygen.

"Get off," he said. "I've got this jackass."

She obligingly rolled to the side, not wanting to know stickiness she landed in. She coughed, telling herself that air was within reach.

Spike stood slowly, making sure his head was still properly attached before taking a breath to steady himself and rubbing his nose with the backs of his knuckles. He looked at them then, as if just now realizing how mangled his hands were from hitting these indestructible mountains of muscle. "Huh," he said in passing. Then he launched his mangled hand at the man's nose.

Buffy, for her part, was still writhing on the ground. She'd been in fights with all sorts of crazy things--gods, ubervamps, old lovers, legions of fanboys--but she'd never seen anything like these guys. They were trained fighters. _Highly_ trained fighters. And they seemed to block every punch, turn every move against her, use every bit of momentum for their advantage. Even the ones she had beaten fairly quickly were simply a combination of dumb luck and the element of surprise. The fewer they whittled down to the harder they were going to be to kill. She just hoped a vampire and a Slayer could handle it.

Spike landed beside her, busting one of the chairs into thick dangerous splinters. One of them stuck out of his shoulder and she reached over, yanking it out.

"Thanks love," he said, that utterly dazed look on his face that he got when he was getting his ass kicked but still refused to back down. "Got one," he tilted his head in the direction of the now prone and motionless mountain of muscle.

"How many more?"

"No idea. They keep coming."

"What _are_ they?" It was more rhetorical than anything. She took a deep deep shuddering breath that finally reached her lungs before she hopped to her feet. Tag, you’re it.

She surveyed the scene. Luckily, it seemed once they went down and quit moving for awhile they were presumed dead. And they seriously should have been with the injuries they'd been racking up in the past ten minutes. Buffy moved gingerly, wincing against the pain in her back. She spotted them. Both of them. Just two left. They, too, were surveying the scene. The bowling alley was still and eerily silent. They growled and bared their teeth when they saw her moving.

"That's right. Baby wants to play," she quipped at them, all fight and no fun. One of them launched at her and she grabbed him by the collar and sleeve, sending him careening into one of the ball returns. He was injured but stood up, wobbling and with a noticeable limp. He was still headed for her.

So was the other one. The man’s fingers were around her throat before she could even manage to half turn her attention back to the guy. They clamped around her windpipe like a vice. If they squeezed any harder they'd crush the vertebrae in her neck and, unlike Spike, for her that was pretty much a one way ticket. She grabbed at his wrists, trying to find some way to pry herself loose. She kicked his shins and he faltered. She aimed for them again and before she had even swung her leg she found herself sprawled atop him on the floor, his hands still around her neck.

Spike had swept his feet out from under him, buckling his knees from behind. He leaned down, his white hair swimming into her pounding field of view, and cracked one of the guy's arms eliciting a scream. The man let Buffy go instantly and she fell on top of him hard as he reached to cradle his arm. Spike grabbed her shoulder and dragged her off the guy. She hit the floor with a thump and found herself cradled in his lap. She coughed, spatters of blood--her own blood--spewing onto the leg of his jeans.

"Oh," she croaked. "That's never good."

"Buffy--!" he twirled away and she hit her head on the ground before she could catch herself. Spike had launched himself at the last one's knees as he was advancing on them with a one of the chair legs, brandishing it to the side like a baseball bat. The man went down hard in the detritus of the bowling alley, scrambling around, trying desperately to aim heavy handed broad swings at Spike's head. Spike held him off, clamping down so hard on the guy's wrist that he drew blood, but still the man continued.

The broken-armed guy came up behind the tussling pair and Buffy pulled the same maneuver on him, launching herself at his knees. She coughed heavily and cried out in absolute pain when his full weight landed on her, crushing her to the ground. She rolled them, landing on top and pummeling him repeatedly with her fist. Once, twice, three times across the cheek and temple until his face took on a dazed look and his eyes rolled back into his head. His eye was swelling shut.

She tried to hop to her feet but found all she could do was sort of kneel to the side of her last kill. She crawled forward on her knees where the two men were weakly struggling. Mid-swing, she grabbed hold of the chair leg, stopping the wild motions of both of the guys. Spike turned to look at her, saw the angry fire in her eyes and rolled off quickly. The man sprang to a sitting position before Buffy could swing the pointy end down on him. When he stood it only gave her a better angle, what with her completely screwed up shoulder and the fact that her back was making her stoop halfway over.

With a vicious swing she landed the point of the broken chair leg in the guy's heart.

Everything stilled.

He hung there as if suspended by a string.

He stared at her, wide-eyed, his mouth slightly agape before a jet of blood rushed from between his lips and dribbled down his chin. He coughed and it went splattering all over her face. She closed her eyes in shock, her own mouth agape now. This wasn't what was supposed to happen. This wasn't what happened when you a hit a demon through the heart with a stake...

He careened forward, latching onto her, and slid down her front, his movements jerky and uncoordinated. He clutched so tightly at the hem flare of her jeans that it ripped the material at the knee, all of his weight hanging on her clothing.

The man finally collapsed in a motionless heap on the ground, blood still gushing freely from around the wooden stake, dribbling lamely from the corner of his mouth. His eyes were wide and unseeing.

She stood there, stock still, half crumpled beneath her own injuries and covered in the blood of who knew how many others.

"Love," she heard a croak from the floor and started, looking around wildly. Spike was crawling back to his feet. "Buffy, love." She couldn't quite seem to comprehend what he was saying. He stood, kicking the corpse away from her. It fell away easily, leaving her free. "Come on."

"They were human," she said, her voice low and shaky. "They were all--" it cracked and she cleared her throat. "All of them. They were all human."

His arm went around her shoulder and she winced. "Oh god," she said. "Oh god, what have I done."

"Come on, love. Come _on_." He was tugging at her but she couldn't get her feet to move. She couldn't remember how. She just stood there in the middle of the carnage, staring around wild eyed. She didn't even see it anymore.

"So help me, Buffy, if I could carry you I would, but I'm pretty certain we're both just as bad off."

No response.

"Buffy!" he screamed right in her face. Still nothing. He pulled back his broken hand and let it fly, the already crunched bones breaking further against her cheek bone.

She didn't even try to catch herself. She fell backward, landing hard on her ass in the middle of what looked like a terrible meat grinder accident. Her hand landed in what may or may not have been a cold squishy pile of brains. The feel of it snapped her out of it.

"Ugh!" she cried out in disgust. "Ugh, ugh, ugh!" she tried to wipe the goop off of her fingers onto her jeans to no avail.

"Come on," Spike said, just relieved that she had come back to herself so quickly. "Let's get out of here."

"Wha--what the _fuck_ is going on here?"

He held a hand down to her and she took it, neither of them caring what manner of carnage they were smearing on each other. They couldn’t get anymore covered in it anyway.

"Let's go. We'll figure it out later. Gotta be something on the news, right? Gotta be... something..." he couldn't tell if his head was twinging because his face had been beat in so many times or for some other reason. It didn't matter much. The headache he felt coming on, he'd much rather be locked away somewhere private to experience it rather than sitting in the middle of one of the bloodiest massacres he'd ever encountered. And that was saying something.


	4. Chapter 4

She threw down her bag, which she had dug out from under their seat before they left the bowling alley, and headed straight for the bathroom. She didn't even bother to peel off her clothes, opening doors and touching handles only with the relatively bloodless side of her hand. It was hard going. Spike would've helped if he could've moved his own hand, but the one was fairly hopeless and so broken he could barely move it. His other arm was numb from the shoulder down and he didn't exactly want to know what was wrong with it. It moved, but he only knew it by watching his fingers flex.

Buffy stepped beneath the piping hot stream of water fully clothed, so desperate to be beneath it that her foot hooked on the side of the tub and she tripped, catching herself and leaving bloody smeared handprints on the wall of the shower. She let the water wash across her face, rinsing away as much of the blood and chunks of whatever-the-hell-that-was as she could in one fell swoop. She held her hands beneath the stream next and noticed that they were shaking so hard it wasn't any wonder she couldn't get doors open.

Spike wandered through the doorway to the bathroom, concerned at the strange little noises she was making. He found her staring at her trembling hands. She looked like an earthquake all to herself.

“You all right, Buff?"

She turned, holding her hands out to him as if to show him her blood covered palms. There was nothing there but slightly pink streams of water.

He stepped forward, taking her hands in his. He ran a thumb across her palm and smeared a new streak of gore across the white surface. Weird--one hand he couldn’t feel at all and the other felt like it was on fire.

"Just blood," he said. "It washes right off." He held her hand back under the water as if to illustrate the point. The blood trickled away in a pink stream and made a pattern going down the drain. "See?"

She grabbed him by the shirt and yanked at him frantically until he overbalanced against the side of the tub and had to step in to keep himself from busting his head open.

She turned him around, setting him beneath the spray and wiping frantically at his face and hair, mussing at his shirt and rinsing every drop of blood that she could find off of him.

"Woah, woah, _hey_!" he said, grabbing hold of her shoulders and stalling out her crazed episode. "Buffy, calm down. It washes." He ran his hands over her hair, pulling her beneath the spray with him and rinsing the blood from the strands. She seemed mesmerized by the swirls it made going down the drain. "See?"

"Get it off me," she said, so small he almost couldn't hear it over the spray of the water.

His eyes narrowed slightly and he bent his head to look her in the eye, pulling her chin up with a crooked finger so that he could see her face. He cocked her one of those gentle smiles of his and her eyes pleaded with him. Sometimes she thought perhaps it was _too_ easy, being with him. It was so easy she was terrified that it wouldn't last. He always knew.

He rubbed his thumbs across her cheekbones and she closed her eyes, the feel of him washing away the sullied grossness on her skin far more effectively than the water had washed away the blood. He ran his fingers across her ears, tilting her head both ways to make sure there were no surprise meaty flecks hiding there. Then he ran his hands through her hair, squishing and squeezing all the pink water he could from them.

He took a deep breath. "Where's your shampoo?" It was in his hand before he was done asking. He squeezed a generous amount into his palm and lathered it into her hair, massaging her scalp as he went. He maneuvered her around so that her back was to him and leaned her into him, the blood washing away where their clothes scraped together beneath the water. She pressed against him, revelling in the feel of his fingers, and he felt the tension in her body melting away.

He dropped a kiss at the crux of her neck just where it splayed out into her shoulders and she shivered against him. After he had sufficiently scrubbed at her hair, he stepped backward slightly, leaning her so that the shampoo rinsed down the drain. The look on her face was exquisite. He started wondering just how fast he could get out of his drenched jeans.

He stood her back up beneath the spray to face him and she opened her eyes, locking his gaze with such intensity that he felt his chest tighten. She ran her fingers across his face one more, then checked behind his ears and along his neck. His hair was clean already. Then, hands still wrapped around his neck and the base of his skull, she pulled his mouth to hers and with one soft desperate sigh she kissed him.

It was strange to kiss him when he was warm--the scalding water in the process of heating him up even warmer than she was. It was surreal and she could have sworn she felt a pulse in his lips, but that could have been her own. It made her jerk back from him, frantic, but he wouldn't have it and he pulled her back in.

She ran her hands up under his blood and water sodden shirt and pulled it over his head, throwing it behind them to land with a splashy smack on the floor of shower. He tugged at her blouse, cursing the tensile strength of wet cotton when the buttons wouldn't pop and unable to unbutton her shirt with one hand broken and the other numb. She placed her hands on his, stilling them, and smiled a soft sad smile before she quickly rid herself of the garment. Bra followed and the pieces of clothing landed on top of his behind them. Small streams of red and pink pooled around them and trickled past their feet toward the drain.

He pawed at her skirt, pleased that she had gone for the slutty-innocent look on their excursion to the bowling alley. Buffy pulled away from him, unzipping the wet fabric and tugging it off with her underwear to drop at her feet in the same pile. Where she stood in the gorey clothing her feet came away with puddles of blood and she rinsed them off quickly before diving for him and unfastening his jeans. They were hellacious to get off and he couldn't do much to help, but she finally had him free and they stood there in the spray of the shower, stark naked and washed clean.

She stepped up to him, hands on his shoulders, her face a mixture of frantic desperation and desire.

"Can I?" she asked.

"Yes," he said. "God, yes."

She swung herself up, legs wrapped around his waist, and his arms went around her, elbows pressing into her sides to hold her in place. She leaned in, taking his lip between her teeth and scraping ever so slowly and lightly out as she positioned herself above him and slid slowly down his length. He growled against her, a low rumbling in his throat that was more akin to the not-a-purr than anything else.

God, when she needed this she was... she was…when she needed this he needed it too. He forgot how she could be when she was needy. She was unbelievable. She rippled her walls around him when he was fully sheathed, pulling her face back to nip at his bottom lip with a sharp bite before she locked her lips onto his and took a long draw at his soul.

She levered herself upward, sliding herself along his body until just the tip of him remained inside. Just as slowly, she lowered herself back down, pressing herself further against him when he was as far in as he could go, mashing her clit on his body.

“ _Cor_ , Buffy.”

“Mm,” she managed to grunt in reply, pressing a kiss beneath the hollow of his jaw as she worked herself back up him, and then slowly back down. It was the pace she took in desperation, always slow and deep and hitting all the right places for as long as possible. It was a pace he’d gotten used to and probably his favorite. It used to make him feel like he was helping. That and it made him blow his top like nothing ever had before.

He could feel his knees buckling, a dull ache pounding behind his eyes, and the adrenaline of the massive brawl wearing off completely. He let his back hit the tub wall, his wet skin rubbing out the bloody smear that Buffy had managed to plant there like a kid finger-painting on the wall. She groaned against him when the jolt of his impact hit a sweet spot deep inside of her. He slid down the tub until he had her cradled in his lap, knees bent up so that she could rest her back against them, the two of them crammed together in the small tub. She splayed her legs out to the side, bending them beneath her so that she could gain leverage as she rode him.

He leaned in, the black spots clearing from his vision now, and captured her lips fiercely, his hands digging into her hips and grinding her down against him with every thrust.

She ground herself against him, jackhammering her hips so hard that he knew it would probably leave bruises, but those were always the sweetest kind of bruises. She began to grow erratic and he knew she was about to come. She pulled back from him slightly, and took a long draught of air, then leaned in again and banged her forehead to his, face twitching and contorting until finally she crashed down on him in one final hard thrust and she grunted a long feral noise that ended in a moan as she clenched around him.

Spike held her hips, working one or two more thrusts before he too came, shooting his seed deep inside of her and cracking the back of his head on the tub wall. She was breathing heavily, collapsed against him as if she were suddenly boneless, and he could tell by her ragged breathing that she was crying. He wrapped his arms around her, holding her to him. Gravity was doing all the work, smashing them together. It was a matter of comfort.

They sat there beneath the spray of the water for a long time.

Finally she snuffled, sitting up using his chest to balance. He tilted his head, eyes soft, and ran his fingers across her cheek before petting at her hair. His touch was so light that her brow furrowed and she grabbed the swollen thing that used to be a hand.

“Oh, god, your hand. I’m so sorry.”

“Wasn’t you, pet.”

“I shouldn’t’ve--we should’ve... I’ll get the bandages.”

He caught her in his arms as she tried to stand, pressing her back against him, his hands fairly uselessly dangling off the ends of his arms. “Hey, now. Bandages can wait.” He kissed her hair just above her ear. “You all right?”

“Yeah,” she said, and she sounded all right now. “I’ll be fine.”

“You all clean?”

“In everything but the metaphorical sense.”

“All right then. You can play doctor.” He let her go and she stood, reaching over to turn off the water as Spike admired her backside at eye level.

She yanked back the shower curtain and stepped out onto the mat, snatching at a towel and drying herself off quickly and thoroughly.

“Are those clean?” she said pointing at their clothes, fluffing at her hair and sending water droplets skittering off in every direction.

“Not sure as these’ll ever be clean. But they’re as clean as they’re going to get.”

“Come on,” she said, leaning over the edge of the tub.

“What?”

“Lean on me.”

“I can get up, love.”

“Fine then, don’t lean on me.”

He got up, but it wasn’t pretty. She scrutinized him with a crooked eyebrow the entire time then swooped in and began to dry him with her towel.

He watched her at work, noticing the cuts and scrapes she had and the bones that he felt sure were broken just by the way she moved and the bruises blossoming across her body. He guiltily noted the brilliant purple and red specimen blooming across her right cheek.

When she’d gotten him sufficiently dry she folded the towel up and draped it over the side of the tub. “Sit down,” she said, walking out the door and digging through one of her bags. She came back with what looked like an entire field medic’s kit but he knew it was just the Slayer first aid arsenal. She knelt down in front of him, still perfectly naked, and patted his knees lightly. He rested his hands where she patted, enjoying this mothering side of Buffy as much as he ever had. As much as he enjoyed the vulnerable side, and the ass-kicking side, and the domineering side. What could he say--he just loved the girl.

She picked up his apparently uninjured hand carefully. “What’s wrong with this one?”

“Can’t feel it.” He flexed it to show her. “Moves, just can’t feel it.”

“Shoulder?”

“Probably.”

“Dislocated?”

“Doesn’t feel like it, but with everything else that hurts I really can’t tell.”

She felt up his arm gingerly, her fingers gentle and prodding. When she made it to the swell of his deltoid, he winced and she pressed harder.

“Ow, all right. Bloody— _ow_ \--stop!”

She stood, straddling the tub wall and inspecting. “I think it is dislocated. You probably tore something getting it back where it is now. I’m gonna have to--” she put her hands on either side of his shoulder and pressed hard, slipping his arm back into socket at just the right angle.

“Ah _ow_!” he cried out, knocking her away and sending her down hard on her ass.

“Ok. Ow back,” she said. Standing again and rubbing at her tail bone.

“Sorry. Oughta warn a bloke.” He spread his fingers and began to shake out his hand, the feeling coming back in pins and needles.

“You’re worse when you know what’s coming.”

He quirked his eyebrow at that and she popped him lightly on the side of the head with her flattened fingers--a gesture of affection and dismissal all at once.

She knelt at his knees again, taking his hand in hers. “I’m gonna have to--”

“Yeah, just do it.” He sucked in an entirely unnecessary breath and held it, grinding his teeth and resolutely not crying out while she mashed all the bones somewhat back into place. The feel of them moving beneath her hand made her queasy and he could tell by the look on her face that this was just as bad for her (in a rather different way) as it was for him.

“Did I get them all?” she said finally, face a bit green.

“Since my entire hand now feels like it’s being stuck with flaming needles, I’d say yeah you got them all.”

She took out a bandage and began to wrap it up loosely. “I can’t set it or anything.”

“It’ll be fine tomorrow. Better anyway. I’ll be able to use it again.”

“Don’t move it until it’s better.”

“How daft do you think I am?”

It was her turn to quirk an eyebrow then. He wrapped his newly re-sensationed arm around her waist and pulled her to him, nuzzling his nose between her breasts. She combed her fingers through his hair and kissed his head, pressing her to him, before she pulled back and gave his hair a pat.

“Let’s see if the TV says what the fuck is going on.”

“Right,” he said, letting her go, his hand trailing in her waist as she slipped away from him. He turned around, picking at their clothing and squeezing it out one-handed before hanging it over the shower curtain rod to dry. There were large red stains on Buffy’s blouse, and his jeans were hopelessly stained as well, but the rest of their clothing was dark enough for stains to not show too well. Then again, he didn’t much fancy ever wearing these particular garments again and if _he_ felt that way, he could only imagine how Buffy felt about it.

A pair of hideous plaid pajama pants came hurling through the bathroom door and landed at his feet. Apparently wandering around naked was not on the agenda tonight.

He came out to find Buffy in those ridiculous old sushi pajamas that had survived about twenty Apocalypses at this point. Those were the pajamas that pretty much signalled long bouts of cuddling and little else. She was sitting in the middle of the bed, one foot tucked beneath her and her arms wrapped around her other leg. Her chin was propped on her knee. She was watching the television with its electronic buzz and its tinny announcers as they had reporters on-site in various locations, seemingly terrified out of their wits and looking around wildly as mobs of people were either running screaming past the camera or the cameras were going blank entirely.

“What is this?” she said beneath her breath, brow furrowed and studying the screen intently.

He had the pajamas slung low on his hips, intent at least on giving her some eye candy (or so he told himself as he pursed his lips in that saucy way watching her watch the news.)

It was when he finally looked at the television himself that he was in trouble.

“Oh... _god_.”

It hit him like a Mack truck, his head bursting so harshly that he could see stars. He clutched it, doubling over with a scream. Not like it was anything new, his head cracking open and pouring his brains out on the floor. But it was never pleasant, no matter how used to it you got.

He was in her lap in an instant as she crashed to the floor to cradle his head on her thighs. It was as if her fingers couldn’t decide if they should rub at his temple or try and hold his brains in where he acted as if they were popping out of his skull. She opted for shoving his hands away and putting the pressure on his skull herself. After a few moments, he quieted.

“I remember,” he said, breathless and just above a whisper. “All of it. I remember. Oh, sweet Christ, Buffy. We need to get underground.”

“Newsflash: we’re in New Orleans. Their _dead_ people aren’t even underground.”

“Right...” he trailed off into silence. She wiped at the tears that had streamed down his face from the pain, brushing them away with the pad of her thumb. Her nails scraped lightly and pleasantly through his hair against his scalp. It made him want to cry again, for entirely different reasons. “Too right.”

“What’s going on?”

“Everyone’s going to die.”

“Welcome to Apocalypse _XI_!” she said, pronouncing the roman numeral as “ex eye.” She crossed her forearms then popped one arm up straight, dropping her voice as low as she could get it, like an announcer at a monster truck rally. “Please make sure the lapbar is fastened securely around your waist and keep your hands and feet inside the car at all times.”

“This isn’t a joke,” he said, sitting up abruptly and facing her, Indian-style, a mere yard away. When he had serious-face that close, it raised goosebumps.

“It never is a joke,” she said, dropping the levity. “But it helps to treat it like one sometimes.”  
He used his hands to inch himself closer, stopping when his shins hit her knees. She watched him the entire time, curious, growing more terrified by the second.

“You saw the TV.”

“I saw it. I don’t know what the hell they’re talking about, but I saw it.”

“Well, I do know what they’re talking about. And, so help me, if I ever get back to San Diego I have a seer’s ass to kick. I should never have brought you here.”

“ _Thank_ you. _Now_ he gets it!”

“No, I mean--” he leaned in and picked up one of her hands in one of his, holding it as gingerly as if it were made of blown glass. “All I want to do is to keep you safe.”

“I’m the Slayer, Spike. I can take care of myself.”

“I know you can. I know you’re strong and you’re smart and you could kick my ass in a fair and an unfair fight. I know because you’ve done it on a regular basis. But I also know that this--” he paused as if replaying whatever bit of information had just hit his brain like a ton of bricks. “I can’t even fight this Buffy. I should’ve taken you to the North Pole or Antarctica or North Dakota.”

She cocked one of those half smiles at him, using her other hand to pick his up, lacing all ten of her fingers with all ten of his, completely ignoring her own advice to keep his broken hand still. She gave them a squeeze. “You’d have frozen solid and I’d have had to haul you around tied to my waist like a giant ice sculpture until we found a warm place to thaw you out.”

“That’s not funny. Just somewhere without anybody. Without anything.”

“What’s going _on_?”

“They’re erasing people.”

She sat there, stunned a moment, staring at him as if he’d gone crazy. He was used to that look, although not for the same reasons.

“Erasing people?” she said, in a tone that clearly stated just how crazy she thought he’d gone.

“Through phones. They’re erasing people’s minds--erasing them entirely. _Don’t pick up the phone_.”

“Since you smashed it into thousands of tiny pieces this afternoon, I don’t think we have to worry about it.”

He had such a desperate look on his face that she was almost scared. She hadn’t seen him like that since he’d lost his mind back in Sunnydale. The real time he’d gone crazy, not all the times she just thought he was crazy.

“Don’t pick up a phone, don’t go near a radio, don’t--turn off the TV. _Turn it off_.” He stood, tearing from her, grabbing hold of the TV and flinging it across the room. It caught at the end of the power cord, smashing to the ground, sparks flying, before it yanked from the wall.

Buffy skidded backward, ducking behind the bed. “ _Spike!_ ” she cried, exasperated. “Chill the fuck out, will you? Fine, I get! Nothing with a signal.”

“No signal,” he said, frantic. “Nothing... nothing with a signal.” He proceeded to grab the telephone, yanking the cord out of the wall and chucking it across the room where it crashed, falling in pieces to the ground, the ringer still trilling out one last bell. The clock radio followed.

Buffy stood, shooting him a look of annoyance, but no longer frightened. “All right. You killed everything. We good now?”

He stood there a moment, eyes roving the room as if there were some secret bug that he had missed, about to emit something to erase them both.

“Yeah,” he said, running his uninjured hand through his hair. She noticed the bandage was trailing raggedly off his other hand. He took a deep breath and let it out to steady himself. Damn, but sometimes oxygen was almost as good at calming a bloke down as nicotine. “Yeah, we’re good.”

She took a step towards him, but he jerked, hand almost going back to his head but stopping halfway there. She stepped forward, wrapping her arms around his waist and resting her head on his chest. She held him that way until she could feel his muscles relax, feel him calming. He wrapped her up in his embrace.

“I didn’t hurt you, did I?”

“I’m good at ducking.”

“We need to get out of here. Or somewhere safer. Somewhere inside maybe. Like on the courtyard.”

We’re on the courtyard. We’re in an in inner room on the courtyard on the ground floor. I seem to recall you _insisting_ that we be in this very room.”

“Right...”

They stood there like that for a long time, taking reassurance from the feel of the other in their arms. Buffy nuzzled her cheekbone against his chest before she placed a kiss between his pecs.

“We’ll be ok.”

“Right...” he didn’t sound so sure. He simply sounded as if he were parroting her, agreeing with whatever she said so that she’d feel better. She didn’t like this not-listening-Spike. She liked Spike who listened to everything she said and talked it out. She’d rather have a roaring fight with him than have him all broody and internalized like that. She didn’t like it. It reminded her of other people and other places and other times when she herself had been like that. She wondered if it had ever cut him as sharply to see her that way as it cut her.

“Spike... _will_ we be ok?”

He snapped out of whatever it was he was thinking of, stopped seeing whatever it was he was seeing.

“I don’t know, Buffy. I didn’t get that far. All I got was a prophecy. I didn’t get the personal details.”

She scoffed, snorting a derisive little breath of air through her nose. “Seems to me like a prophecy is pretty useless if you don’t remember until after it’s happened already. It’s worse than TV news.”

He shot her an entirely unamused glare that was better than a kiss, better than a word of thoughtless consolation. She grinned back at him, leaning up to capture his lips with hers. She wrapped her arms around his neck and held her face there, forehead pressed against his.

“I’m afraid.”

“I am too.”

“I’m confused.”

“Me too.”

“Spike, don’t leave me.”

“I won’t leave you. I won’t ever leave you again. You made me promise that already. I don’t break my promises. You know that.”

“I know that.” She pulled him back down in a searing desperate kiss. “I know it. I’m so afraid. I don’t want to not be me. I don’t want you to not be you.”

“We’ll be careful. We’ll take precautions. We’ll... we’ll do our best, Buffy.”

“Yeah. We’ll do our best.”

But she was still afraid and the more she thought about it--about her body without herself in it--the more terrified she grew. She thought about what it would have been like when Faith had switched their bodies if Buffy had simply been erased and replaced with the other girl. Tears slowly started to leak down her cheeks--terrified tears that she wasn’t even ashamed of. He just held her, equally as terrified and having no idea what the hell they could do about it.

*

They’d agreed to go out patrolling. There were more people now who needed help than ever before and they’d agreed that it was the only thing that they could do. If they gave up their duties there was really no point in fighting for who they were. They wouldn’t be worth fighting for anymore. And so they’d laid out guidelines, found some earplugs, decided to stay away from the real metro area and to run whenever they saw someone carrying something that looked more technologically advanced than a pick axe.

He wanted to talk with her, now. He’d had more knock down drag out brawls in this one night than in the whole previous year combined. He needed to speak with her. They needed to discuss who to kill, who to help, who to slay. Things weren’t so cut and dried now. They weren’t so black and white anymore. The rules had all changed. The rules had gone to hell. He’d decided for himself that there were no rules and he needed to run that by her. They needed to be on the same page. The gang of vamps he’d met hadn’t exactly helped him with his ethical quandary either. It was well before sunrise when he couldn’t keep the questions from distracting him any longer and he knew he’d better head on back to her.

He came in, hotel keys jingling. “Buffy?”

The lights weren’t on and he was starting to get worried that something had happened to her on the way to the cemetery where they met every night after their separate patrols. She hadn’t shown. He’d wanted to tell her about the vamp nest that he’d found. He’d had a good talk with them and thought they had a sound plan for fighting the Butchers. (That was what the television had called them—”Butchers” like someone who carved up meat into palatable chunks.) True, it involved copious amounts of vampire feasting, but it was better than letting the massacring fiends run free through the streets.

He heard a small noise, so tiny that he probably wouldn’t have picked it up with human ears. A sort of squeaking. He turned the corner.

She was curled up on the edge of the bed, sitting there with her arms wrapped around her legs, rocking gently back and forth. He could just see her eyes over her knees. When he got closer he could hear her whispering, just barely above her breath.

“I wanna go home. I wanna go home. I wanna go home. I wanna go home...”

He reached out to touch her shoulder and she jerked backward, arms splayed back to catch herself, legs uncoiling like a spring wound too tight and held too long. He caught a knee in the chest and grabbed her calf to keep her steady.

“Woah, hey now. S’all right. S’just me.”

“Spike,” she said, as if disbelieving her eyes.

“What’s the matter, love?” Because this wasn’t the usual angst and woe. This was something else, somehow. And it worried him more than usual.

“I wanna go home.”

“Caught that bit.”

“I wanna go home.”

“Didn’t you go patrolling tonight?”

She shook her head minutely, her face as hard as stone.

“Any reason why not?”

“I wanna go home.”

“Yeah, well. So do I. But it’d be awfully hard to get there.”

She continued to rock back and forth, back and forth, in a gentle sway that was starting to hypnotize him. He shook his head briefly, then took her knees in his hands firmly. “Buffy!” he snapped. Her eyes locked on his. “You’re Buffy. You’re the Slayer. These people need your help. Don’t you want to help them? Don’t you want to go out and help them?”

She managed to yank a leg free and land a vicious kick to his side. “I wanna go _home_ ,” she cried.

“All right, all right,” he said, rubbing at the spot where she’d more than likely cracked a few ribs. “Home to San Francisco?”

She shook her head, wild-eyed, drawing her free leg back to her chest and resting her chin on it, willing him with her eyes to read her mind. He was always so damn good at reading her mind when she was keeping things she didn’t want anyone ever to know. Why couldn’t he do it when there were things she needed him to just pull out of her brain without words?

He sat back, cradling her foot in his hand. He hefted it, feeling the weight of it for a moment, before he allowed his thumb to caress the arch of her foot. He seemed to be memorizing every curve and bone.

He looked back up at her, eyes sharp and blue and as all-knowing as ever and she almost wanted to sigh with relief. “Sunnydale.” So he knew. He knew about the dreams, and the terror, and the horrible loneliness and emptiness. He knew. She did sigh. It came out almost like a squeal, a scream. It was breathy and carried half her tension with it. Just holding that in had taken a lot. The stupid absurdity of it had weighed on her mind. He didn’t seem to think she was crazy.

He let go of her foot. “Come on,” he said, flapping his hands at her.

“What?”

“Lie back.”

“ _What_?”

“Just _do_ it.” They were both tired beyond compromise and tired beyond fighting. Which mostly meant they milled around in apathetic acquiescence. She scooted backwards onto the bed, lying sideways and sliding her head up to the pillows.

The bed creaked when he knelt on the mattress, his weight making such a depression that Buffy felt herself tilting in his direction. He rustled around behind her and she stopped falling onto her back when she hit his chest. He nestled her there, wrapping an arm securely around her waist and kissing her lightly behind her ear. His nose nuzzled through her hair. He petted her head with his cheek.

“Close your eyes.”

“Why?”

He started to sing again, but at least this time she knew what he was singing.

_Close your eyes and I’ll kiss you,_  
 _Tomorrow I’ll miss you,_  
 _Remember I’ll always be true_  
 _And then while I’m away_  
 _I’ll write home every day_  
 _And I’ll send all my lovin’ to you._

She smiled, despite herself, and closed her eyes, drawing in a long breath and breathing out a sigh that took the rest of her tension with it.

He shifted behind her, sliding his free arm beneath her neck and wrapping it around her chest, pulling her to him. He took his other hand and ran his fingertips lightly up and down her arm, like falling flower petals from a cherry blossom tree.

“We’re back in Sunnydale,” he started. “On your back porch.”

“Where exactly are we snuggling on my back porch?”

“Shut it.” He playfully clapped a hand over her mouth and she swatted him aside, a tiny smile on her face. All he wanted was to take that aching pressure off her heart. He felt fairly certain he was at least making a valiant attempt. “We’re on your back porch, canoodling on the steps. Sitting there, mind, ‘cause if we were layin’ on ‘em we’d roll off. Get nasty splinters in bad places.”

“Right. Splinters bad. Canoodles good.” She wiggled against him, settling in tighter.

“I lean in to you, and kiss your hair.” He did so. “It’s just you and me at night and the sky’s full of stars. The Bit’s off at school somewhere. Red’s off doing some witchy thing. Xander’s doing whatever the hell Xander does on warm lonely Southern California nights. No extra girls to get in the way, no blood thirsty friends to judge. Just you and me at home.”

“Mm, do you live with me?”

“Too right, I live with you. You and me, in that house together with nobody else at all. And there we are, on the back porch, watching the stars.”

“Are they doing something nifty?” she asked cheekily, and some of the pressure lifted off his own heart that he had drawn her back out into the world with him.

“Shining.”

“Yeah,” she mumbled. “That’s what stars do.”

“I wrap my arm around you and pull you close. It’s chilly out. It’s getting to be winter.”

“Because you’re the warmest person I know,” she said sarcastically.

“You’re really not helping this narrative.”

“You’re a crap storyteller.”

“Yeah?” His voice was dangerously low. “Am I?” His hand went down, started at the back of her knee and trailed all the way up her thigh, over the swell of her buttocks, her hip, into her waist, and slid around to cup her breast. “I whisper in your ear how much I want you. I tell you that the stars don’t have enough fire to even come close to being a good enough metaphor for how I feel about you.”

She shuddered against him, a chill running up her spine. He noted with pride the goosebumps that rose on her upper arm.

“I turn you in my arms,” he did so, rolling her easily to face him. Her eyes were still dutifully closed and he studied her face. “And lean in to kiss you.” He leaned in, his lips closing softly over hers.

She pulled back, one hand on his chest to hold him off, and lay there, head on the pillow, looking at him with clear green eyes.

“That’s not what the back porch is for.”

“Oh yes, it bloody well is.” He tried to pull her back in but she was resolute.

“That’s _not_ what the back porch is for.”

“Want me to move this to the bedroom? Or the basement?”

“No. I like the back porch. Although, if you’re going to move it, move it to the basement.”

He smiled, his eyes soft, remembering. “All right then. Back porch. I stop kissing you, because you ask me to, mind. Because I know what ‘no’ means, thank you very much.”

“Got it. Spike increased his vocabulary. Check.” She mimed making a check mark in the air and he captured her wrist with his fingers, pulling her hand back to rest splay-fingered on his chest.

“Close your eyes.”

She closed them again.

“I can hear the crickets,” she said. He didn’t know if she heard ones outside or the ones back in Sunnydale on those cool nights. But that didn’t matter. He knew, of course. Right when she stopped his naughty ways. He knew exactly what the back porch was for. He knew what that space represented in her mind and he knew that there was no way in infinite dimensions that he’d ever sully it for her. It was a place of comfort for her, where she could sit with him and just be as sad or terrified as she truly was inside and he wouldn’t judge her and he’d make sure that nobody else saw it and that nothing would hurt her in her weak moment. It was a place where they called truces, even in the early times, and where she was allowed to be Buffy and not the Slayer--where he could be Spike and not just a vampire. It was a holy place to both of them, where masks fell away, and even in a towering rage or a swallowing depression they could take comfort in one another. They both missed that stupid back porch of that stupid house more than just about anything else in all of Sunnydale. There was no where else that could come close to it.

“I hold you to me, on the steps, like I always wanted to when you felt... not a hundred percent. I let you nuzzle into my chest and cry or whatever you need to do. Because I’m here for you Buffy.”

“You’re always here,” her voice was soft, filled with some cross between appreciation and wonder. “You’re always here when I need someone.”

“Someone to talk to. Someone to let you be you. You know I’m here for you.” He had lost track of the narrative, speaking as himself. In her mind’s eye, she saw them on the porch, wrapped so tightly together that they were just a dark blot against the white siding of the house.

“I love you,” she said barely above a whisper, her eyes so suddenly locked on his. Maybe if she said it so small that no one else could hear, it wouldn’t get trampled all over and swallowed whole by the monsters in the night.

“You don’t have to say it if--”

“No,” she cut him off. “I wanted to say it. I... it... well...” she looked at him, eyes pleading and cheeks blushing a becoming red in the dim light of the lamp. “You do believe me, right?”

“Oh,” he dragged her to him, nestling her head against his shoulder. “Of course I believe you. I’ve believed you every time you’ve said it. Only problem is, you only say it when we’re gonna die.”

“We’re gonna die.”

“You can’t tell me some evening when the birds are singing and the moon’s shining bright?”

“Birds are singing. Moon’s out.”

He glared at her and she relented.

“I just... I don’t like to say it out loud. It makes it cheap. It makes it not what we have. It makes it fit to words. And the words don’t fit.”

He simply watched her, staring at her for a minute before he placed a kiss on her forehead.

“My profound little Slayer.”

“I love you.”

“If you’d ever told me that on your back porch I would’ve fallen into the bushes in shock and been impaled by a twig.”

“Well, then, I’m glad I never told you on my back porch. Keep talking.” She cuddled back into him and closed her eyes.

“Right, yeah. Back porch. Canoodles. Blah blah blah. I was going somewhere with that. Hell if I remember where now.”

“I wish we were there.”

“Yeah. Hell. We’d be safer on the Hellmouth, wouldn’t we? Underground and all. Covered in rubble and debris. Maybe we should’ve gone home.”

She simply shrugged.

“Let’s be there now. Close your eyes too.” She ran her hand over his face and he dropped his eyelids at her touch.

“We’re on the back porch, sitting on the steps, and you’re holding me. That’s where we are, right now.”

And so, in their minds, they were sitting on the back porch of 1630 Revello Drive, jealously guarding their small reprieve from the world crashing down around their ears.

It was the last moment of stolen quiet that they would find.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rewatched Dollhouse to get a feel for this again, and since I started posting these chapters I feel better about them now. Go me, I guess? Post-Apoc Dollhouse is a bit fraught and I feel like Buffy wouldn't handle an unstoppable Apocalypse very well. At any rate, Angst ahead.

Every time she said it, he still cherished the words. He lived for the way she would grab his arm, look straight into his eyes, bite her lip a little bit and say “Spike, I love you.” He knew the weight of those words from her. She had learned not to give them away so flippantly--not to throw them around lightly. She’d been taught that. She’d been taught their value to the point where she was stingy with them. So even though she said it every day now--every time they left and every time they came back and sometimes just when they were lying around--they never lost impact for him. They might as well have been a defibrillator the way he swore he could feel his dead heart jump in his chest.

She was looking at him so intently that her eyes were practically on fire in the darkness. That look that scared him. Because you could hear the words “I love you” as many times as anybody could possibly say them, but to see it right there in their eyes, bare and waiting for you was another thing entirely. They still met in the graveyard although it was utterly pointless now. Some brilliant vamp had had the idea of siring one of the Butchers. Even the thing’s sire had been terrified of the pure and uninhibited carnage that it had caused. It had taken that whole nest and Spike _and_ Buffy to finally subdue the thing and get a stake in its heart. They weren’t going to try that again. It was just a habit to meet there. It just seemed right. And so they kept doing it. They went out on their patrols, they murdered, and they met afterwards amongst the dead. And her eyes burned for him in the night. She drank him with those eyes. Her hand reached for him, grabbing his arm, and she just stared up at him. Hell, she didn’t even have to say it. Neither one of them would have heard it--they’d found some unholy amazing ear plugs that they never went outside without anymore. But he knew what she was saying and he smiled that sweet endearing little smile before he wrapped his arm around her shoulders and they walked back to the apartment.

God, this routine. It was such an easy thing. They fell into things like this without even thinking about them. They barely got through the door before she was kissing him. He fended off her advances, holding her an arm’s length away as he shut and locked the door and re-did all the padding, and protection he’d installed on it. It was the weakest point in the room and must be heavily fortified against anything and everything.

When he turned back to her he opened his arms and she flew into them, kissing him relentlessly, her hands already divesting him of his shirt, his belt, his jeans. She was an insistent little thing.

He reached out to pull the plugs from her ears and tossed them with his own onto the bedside table.

He grabbed her shoulders and pulled her to him, mashing her lips to his. God, he needed her. He always needed her after they went patrolling. He could hardly stand to have her leave his sight. Once he had simply stalked her all evening. He hadn’t killed a damn thing, just watched her work. He couldn’t take it. They’d have to stop this patrolling like things were all normal. They’d have to stop it _now_.

Her shirt was gone, and her jeans, and panties. All gone. He slammed her back against the wall, a possessive growl escaping his throat when he crushed against her. She made that delicious face--that face she made when he touched her in just that way. He used to wonder if anybody else ever got to see that face, but that was before he realized he didn’t give a good god damn as long as he got to see it forever and ever and ever.

His fingers sought her clit, rolling it lightly between his fingertips before he plunged a finger into her depths, headed straight for the spot that always made her scream.

“Oh, Spi---Spi--. Mm, _Spike_.” She writhed against him and it drove him mad. Mad enough that he couldn’t take it any longer. He withdrew his hand and she whined in protest--a noise that threatened pain and death if he didn’t _keep doing that right now_.

His hands went to her waist, picking her up just enough that she took the cue and hopped up on him, leveraging herself against his shoulder with one hand and grabbing his cock with the other, slowly lowering herself down on him until he was a deep as he could go. She closed her eyes and leaned her head back until it hit the wall again. He leaned with her, mashing her shoulder against the wall, his forehead glued to hers. The delicious pressure on her skull made her feel light-headed like when she had a sinus infection. It made her giddy.

They began to move at practically the same time--tiny almost imperceptible movements that nevertheless hit all the perfect little spots. They played each other like master musicians handling their instruments. They spilled arias, and sonatas, and concertos into each other. The music swelled and died away and rose again. He could hit just that place and she would wriggle in _just_ that way.

God, how they needed this. Every morning was getting to be like this. They didn’t bother going out in the day anymore. Only the night was important. Only these short few stolen moments when they made it back in just before sunrise. She gasped and he kissed her, stealing the gasp from her lips and eating it hungrily as if it were a strawberry or a young girl’s neck.

“Buffy,” he whispered against her lips, feeling his own climax nearing.

“Oh, god. Spike--” she reached between them, mashing her own clit so fiercely that she came with a cry, shuddering around him, and he shot into her, bruising her hips where his fingers cut into her skin. They both stood there for a moment, awash, completely awash. They rode out their orgasms together, clinging roughly to each other, both sneering as they milked each other for all they could get. God, how he loved her. She owned him--heart and soul--and she held all of him in the palm of her hand.

Her face relaxed, he could feel the tension draining from her muscles cell by cell until she allowed herself to dangle from his neck. He slid from her and she put her feet back on the ground.

“Ok,” she said, still catching her breath. “Might be better now.”

“How was your patrol?”

She just shrugged. She didn’t like to talk about it anymore. She wouldn’t give body counts. She didn’t keep them. “Yours?”

“Buffy, I can’t do this anymore.”

Her face was suddenly terrified. “What?”

“I can’t go off every evening without you anymore. I can’t be away from you. Things are getting worse. _Much_ worse. Half the time all I bloody think about is if you’re all right. I can’t do it anymore. We either go together or we don’t go at all.”

“You know what I say to that,” she grumbled. He glared in return. This was one of those moments he’d love to go back in time and show himself what was in store--Spike more duty-oriented than the Slayer. The Slayer who he had just fucked against a wall in worshipful desperation. He’d love to just taunt himself sometime. He wished some chappy would invent a time machine.

She looked like she wanted to get free of him, but he had her pinned to the wall. He dipped his head, nuzzling his nose against her neck, and she breathed deeply before nibbling at his ear and letting the air out of her lungs in a soft sigh.

“I’m not gonna lose you,” he whispered. “Not again.”

“I love you.” Her fingers were lacing through his hair. He closed his eyes again, concentrating on the sensation, letting himself rest his ear against her chest and just enjoy her heartbeat. “My legs are all jelly.”

He gave one of his appreciative little “hms”--half a laugh, have a moan, entirely made of pleasure.

“So can we--you know--continue this conversation in bed?”

“That’s the Slayer for you. Always trying to get me on my back.”

She bit his ear a bit harder than necessary.

“Ow!” he pulled back, hand going to his affronted ear and pouty lip thrusting out far enough that it wanted nothing more than to be caught by her teeth and held captive.

“You know, I only do this for you,” she said. “Patrolling. I don’t want to... I can’t even stand to be out there.”

“Buffy--”

“Sh.” Her finger was on his lips and, surprisingly, he shut up. She ducked out of his arms and shed the remainder of her clothing, flopping across the bed, wiggling under the covers, snuggling into one of the pillows. She finagled the sheets until she was comfortable, leaving her whole torso bare from the waist up. It was hot in the room, even if it was getting colder outside. Spike never thought to question the temperature and Buffy never seemed inclined to change it, so there they were. He wasn’t sure the electricity still worked, anyway, and the room held heat that he was loath to give up to the outside. If she got cold he couldn’t really do much to warm her back up.

All he cared about at the moment was the naked Slayer in his bed.

“Come here, love,” she said, drawling the “o” the way he did and making him grin.

“Jerk.” But he plopped down beside her, one arm draped across her waist, and they fell asleep as the gray light of early morning began to make the curtains glow from the outside.

*

Even patrols _together_ were nerve-racking. Even bypassing that whole waiting around in the graveyard with your heart in your throat thing didn’t make it any more tolerable. He was beginning to see where she was coming from, hating going out in it. Who was there left to save?

This was getting to be much too easy. They’d always been good. They’d always been able fight side by side without so much as a word between, falling into patterns and reading each other with surprising ease. That’s why they had fought each other so well--that’s why they fought together so well. Together, they slid through the zombified humans like a hot knife through softened butter. It made Buffy shudder to think about when she thought about it at all. Spike just slashed and burned.

“I love you,” she whispered in the night, installed back in their sanctuary, her hot hands pawing at him, divesting him of any trace of clothing. “I love you, I love you.” Her voice was cracking, full of desperation.

He trapped her wrists, bringing her hands up between them and stilled them on his chest.

“What’s wrong?”

She looked at him, face stretched too tight in just the right places to tell him she was crying but too stubborn now to let the tears fall.

“What’s wrong?” he asked again.

“Do you love me?”

“You know I do. Buffy, what is it?”

“Am I Buffy?” her lower lip trembled. He opened his mouth, brow furrowed and shook his head in just that way that said “what the hell are you talking about?”

“Tell me! Am I Buffy? Is this Buffy?” She wrenched her hands away from him and pulled his face to hers, locking their lips. “Am I Buffy Summers?”

“Buffy! Oy!” He pulled away from her, sitting up against the headboard and holding onto her shoulders to pull her upright too. She looked small--as small as she was. It was weird to suddenly see her as such a tiny thing. He had always loved the way she fit against him, the way his hands could practically wrap around her waist. But she had never seemed small to him. It was frightening to see her this way. He ducked his head down and pulled her chin up so that he was looking straight into her eyes.

He tilted his head to the side for a minute, studying her intently before a small smile cracked his lips.

“Hello. There’s a Buffy in there.”

Her lips curled up into a smile on their own and she closed her eyes and leaned her forehead against his shoulder with a little groan.

He chuckled low in his throat, rubbing a hand across her back. 

“Sorry,” she groaned. “I’m all wiggy. Too wiggy. Major wiggins.”

“No? I couldn’t tell.”

“I really, _really_ hate this.”

His hand stopped and suddenly he wasn’t touching her at all anymore and that was intolerable.

“What, this?”

She lunged, recapturing his hand and settling herself snugly against him. “No, _not_ this. This is anti-wiggins.”

“So. How is my Buffy in there?” he said, knocking gently on her skull with his knuckles. She wrinkled her nose at him.

“Buffy could do with some sleep. And not having to go outside ever again. _Ev_ er.”

She laid her head down against his chest, snuffling her nose into his shirt and taking a giant sniff. "Are you Spike?”

"What _have_ you been smoking?"

"I'll take that as a ‘yes.’"

“You worry too much, love. Take it easy. Nothing can get us in here. I promise. And we have the earplugs when we go out. That seems to be working. You're still you. I'm still me. And I won't let anything happen to you. You know that."

"I know that. I know it. But sometimes you can't do anything. Sometimes things happen and there's nothing you can do about it. Like that girl you told me about. The one who worked with Angel. Nobody could do anything for her."

Spike was silent. Still. It was eerie when he went still like that. It called attention to the fact that she was indeed snuggling a corpse. It shot a chill up her spine and she shifted against him. "Spike?"

"Yeah, I'm here."

"I'm just so tired." And now the tears were falling no matter what she did so she just wiped them on Spike's shirt and he pulled her closer.

"Sleep, my Slayer. Just take a rest."

"There's nothing I can do. I can't keep doing this, Spike. They're--most of them are people. Hell, it's the demons we keep... I just... Spike _I can't do this anymore_." Her world had literally turned upside down and it had her twisted and tired like a wrung out sponge.

He petted at her hair, cooing in her ear and planting kisses in her blonde tresses. "'S'all right my little one. Nothing's gonna harm you... want a song?"

She wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand. It was absurd when he started to sing things, and it was absurd to love the sound of his voice so much and the low rumble of the notes in his chest. She sniffled. "K."

_Nothing's gonna harm you, not while I'm around_  
 _Nothing's gonna harm you, no sir, not while I'm around_  
 _Demons will charm you with a smile—_

"Spike, stop."

_\--for awhile but in time_  
 _Nothing can harm you, not while I'm around._

" _Stop_."

"What's wrong?"

“Everything. Everything is wrong. Everything is _always_ wrong. This is wrong, the world is wrong, there’s--I just... _I can’t_.”

“Sh, sh, sh,” he tried to settle her back down on his shoulder, but she pulled away, looming over him and staring straight into his eyes.

“Spike, I love you.”

“I know it, my darling,” an incredulous laugh tickling his voice. He scooped a hand against her cheek, letting her hair brush the back of his hand. “You don’t have to say it every--”

She swooped down, capturing his lips, her hands roaming down his body, pulling at his clothes again.

“Spike,” she said, her lips still mashing against his. He plucked at hers with his teeth. “Spike, I need you. Please.”

“All right,” he said. “All _right_. Lie back.”

“What?”

“Lie back, we’ll do this right.”

“Because there’s a such thing as ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ with us.”

“Too right there is,” he said, flipping her onto her back with a jerk and a squeal, hands ghosting down her sides. He reached the hem of her shirt and trailed his fingers against the soft skin of her hardened, muscular belly. If you took all the time in the world, didn’t that mean you _had_ all the time in the world to take? Could you force the world to play by your rules just by insisting?

He dragged the flat of his palm against her skin, moving lower, trailing light kisses as he worked her shirt up higher.

“Sit up,” he said.

“No,” with a petulant pout.

“I’ll rip it,” he said. “And then where will we be?”

She sat up and he pulled the shirt over her head and tossed it away, hands cupping against her back where wings would grow if she were an angel.

That was a stupid thought.

He kissed her hard, nipping her lip with his teeth to rid himself of it. She laughed, high and hearty in the back of her throat.

“I know how you feel about blood, Spike, but seriously?”

His eyes were too aglow to look at for long. It burned her to look at him like that, but she took a deep breath and let it out with a slow sigh. The tension left her body with the CO2. The fire in his eyes was warm now, not scalding. Comfortable and present and real.

She let herself relax against his hands, kissing him when he leaned in. She could feel it all--everything between them and behind them and before them. All pressing in on her and out of her and against every front of her own war to stay alive.

They’d done this before--crazy gentle. It stoked her fire just as hot as violent, bruising sex that threatened to break bones (they never quite broke bones.) They’d done just about everything it was possible to do, back then. And lately too--since he’d come back. There was altogether too much dying and returning between them. But crazy gentle tonight, in this place, in this now--she wasn’t sure she could handle it. He didn’t give her a choice in the matter. She had to; capturing her hands anytime she tried to be frantic, hard, ruthless. This was not a night for ruthlessness. This was a night for butterfly kisses and orgasms that lasted hours like lying on a soft bed of cloud. Could you fuck your way to an out of body experience? He was determined to try.

He undressed her carefully, with slow deliberation. He undid her jeans, stretchy and tight, requiring more force than he cared to use to pull them off. He slid to the bottom of the bed, grabbed the hems and pulled, the rough rub of the fabric working her up as it trailed down, down, down. But she stuck to the rules--she let him do it.

Teasing fingers worked her panties free, dropping feather-light caresses on her thigh. He crawled back up her body, bedroom eyes lowered, mouth hovering just out of reach. She waited, watching him nestle between her thighs like a playful kitten. And then he said hello with his tongue.

He had the most devilish tongue. She had always thought this was a much better use for it than snarking up her life.

He savored her, tasting slowly, dipping a leisurely finger into her and caressing. That was the only word for it. Her brushed his fingertips against her silken insides and drew a long breath in through his nose--a sigh, a predatory sniff, an uncontrollable reflex. She didn’t particularly care anymore.

“If you stop, this is going to get violent real fast,” she warned.

The low rumble of his chuckle made her writhe, a soft moan escaping her throat. Teeth, and tongue, and lips--he gave her cunt a suck and she shrieked, knees hooking his shoulders and holding him to her.

“Don’t stop,” she said, as if she needed to. “Don’t you dare.”

He lapped his tongue inside her, lingering, warm from her body, and she came. He didn’t stop, holding her there, high, carefully keeping her flying.

Sometimes they gave each other a workout, but not tonight. Tonight they savored each other, soft and determined, like it was the end of the world.

*

“I’m not going back out there.”

She was breaking. He had seen the cracks before, but now they were starting to actually break. The pieces were coming apart.

“I’m not going back out there. You can’t make me go out there. I won’t do it.”

“Sh, my darling, nobody said you had to go out there. No one’s going to make you do anything you don’t want to do. You’re Buffy.”

“I’m Buffy.”

“That’s right, my own sweet precious Buffy.”

“I’m Buffy. I’m Buffy. I’m Buffy the Vampire Slayer. And I’m not going back out there.”

“You don’t ever have to, love. You don’t have to.”

“Spike?”

“I’m here.”

“I had that dream again. The dark one. I... I don’t...”

“Pet... it’s Sunnydale, isn’t it? In your dream.”

“I don’t know.” The tears were forming now. “I don’t know. I just don’t... I can’t.”

He pet her hair. She could feel the coolness of his skin against her scalp even through the strands.

“How can you take it?” she asked. “How can you? How can you go out every day and just--”

“Hush, my pretty girl. Sh, sh, sh. I just don’t think about it. Just my way. I don’t know how I do it. Just do. Doesn’t mean anything you can’t do it anymore. Just means I’m a nastier lesser person that I can take it long as I have.”

She sniffed mightily. “Hey, let’s go. Let’s take the car and just drive. We’ll drive back the way we came. Sunnydale. I mean we can stop in Sunnydale. We can find Willow--you know she’ll be all right. She’s Willow. We’ll... let’s... Spike _we have to be there_. We have to go home.”

“Hey, calm down. I don’t know if the car would make it back across the country. If we start and it breaks down we’re stuck--we’re good as dead out there in the desert or something where we’d just get wiped and left for dead. We’re good right here for now aren’t we?”

She pouted. Well, not so much pouted. Her brow knit and her mouth was a tight hard little line.

“Hey,” he said, ducking down until he was in her field of vision, trying to call her eyes back from that thousand yard stare without actually touching her. “I love you.”

That caught her. She looked him straight in the eye, her eyes fierce and serious. “I love you back,” she said the way she said it every time, so possessive that he could practically feel her gripping his insides and giving them a twist just to prove it. It was a reciprocal thing. It was an equal love. It made him want to cry. It made him tell her how much he loved her even more than he used to. It made those words legal again. Half the time their conversations threatened to devolve into unintelligible repetitions of endearments. Bah.

“You don’t have to go back out.”

“I’m not letting you go alone.”

He just shrugged.

While the sun was setting that night, she peeled back the curtain and peered out at the day star as it painted the sky like an Impressionist. When it had finally disappeared, leaving all its fantastic reds and oranges and violets to fade to nothing but star-spotted black, she turned to him. “Ready then?”

“Yeah. Let’s go.” And they hauled up their stuff and headed out on patrol.

*

There was something different about it--this wave of them. It knocked down everyone in their tracks, flat on their back, and then up they’d get, asking stupid questions and looking like potato-brains. There was something terrible and terrifying and every other terri-word that existed, but Buffy and Spike didn’t stop. They woke up, they fucked until they couldn’t put it off any longer, they popped in their ear plugs and they headed out. Spike had found a roll of tin foil the last time he’d raided an abandoned grocery store. He brought it home and they spent an evening making conspiracy theory hats, just to make themselves feel better. Hers was sleek and gorgeous, like the battle helmet of a goddess. His was round with a spike in the middle. “Like the Prussian army,” he said. “I always thought they were dashing.” She said it was pointed like his head.

They wore them out, like a nod to the dangers they just ignored. Reckless and stupid and desperate. With tin foil on their heads like eight-year-olds playing astronaut.

But there was something different about this wave--this pulse--whatever it was that was wiping everyone clean like a wet rag on an old schoolhouse slate.

Something that a tin hat and a pair of ear plugs couldn’t fix.

They were surrounded by the crazycakes Butchers, but they were falling at random, like they were crushed beneath an invisible giant foot. Buffy would land a punch and her assailant would drop to the ground, dumbfounded, confused, while one of the catatonic sadsacks they were trying to save would suddenly stand up and take a hack at her head.

She went down, popped in the back of the knees by a surprise attack from the ground. When she dropped them they stayed dropped. This was a newly minted killer.

The signals were flying like _Star Wars_ laserbeams in a firefight tonight.

That didn’t bode well.

“Buffy!” Spike called from across the square. How had they gotten so far apart? One minute they were shoulder to shoulder and then they were half the world away. Did it always happen like this? Suddenly too far, just having to watch? She couldn’t have heard him anyway.

Buffy twisted, heel flying into the jaw of the small girl who had taken her down. Buffy’s legs were razor sharp, jack-knifing herself into a crouch, eradicating every threat in her path, every upright human being in this fray. A swift kick to the knee, a right-cross, a body slam--down they went one after the other, and it was so like her that Spike turned back to his own problems. The crack of a neck, the snap of bone. Bruising a brain on its own skull.

And then they stood alone, the vampire and the Slayer facing each other across the square. Her shoulders were high, her breathing even but heavy. She grinned at him above the carnage.

Then her face fell and his heart fell with it. Her shoulders relaxed, her head jerked.

“No!” he cried, running to her, pointy foil hat falling now when not even a good tussle had dislodged it. It clattered quietly amongst the dead.

“Buffy!” he grabbed her beneath the arms as if she was about to fall. She wasn’t about to fall. She stood perfectly straight. Like a doll. Like one of Drusilla’s playthings. Wouldn’t Dru love this world gone to hell?

“Did I fall asleep?” the Slayer said.

She looked up at him with eyes so innocent that he could have been speaking to a puppy. They pierced his heart with such a sharp splintering pain that he felt certain staking was preferable. Her hands were at her sides, posture perfect like an etiquette textbook. He took one of those hands in his and her expression hardly changed. She cocked her head to one side to watch him as he pulled her fingers to his face. He pressed his forehead against her palm, holding it there so tightly that he was cutting off circulation in the digits. She didn’t mind. Cool tears were dripping onto her fingers. She took her hand from his and rested it against his cheek, her brow furrowed slightly.

He gasped at the gesture, looking up at her intently, eyes all so full of glittering hope that she frowned slightly, hoping he would find what he was looking for even without knowing what it was. But there was nothing there. She dropped her hand back to her side, slightly confused. Her head felt odd. Tingly somehow. She blinked once, twice to try and clear it but it felt perfectly fuzzed as if it were stuffed to the brim with cotton.

He wiped his face, clearing his nose and giving a little cough to clear his throat. He took a breath and composed himself before taking her fingers gently in his. She was as easy to lead as a child’s pony, following obediently and without thinking. She curled her fingers ever so slightly around his.

“Come on, love,” he said. “We need to get you in somewhere. Me too, I expect.”

“In?”

“Out of this mess.”

She didn’t even bother to look around her, she just followed.

*

He puttered about, placing food before her and cleaning up the mess, never looking even vaguely in her direction. His eyes were always focused elsewhere. Once she thought she saw the shine of a tear, her eyes were trained on him constantly, watching his behavior, intent on the very nature of him. She was drawn to him and it didn’t matter why. He changed her clothing for her, slipping her out of what she had been wearing and into some obscenely comfortable garments that seemed as if they had been set out there waiting for her. He set her like a china doll on a soft bed that seemed to have been prepared for her. She watched him intently still.

He sat down in a chair in the corner although the bed seemed quite large enough for the both of them, and it felt as if his place were in it. He had dropped his head into his hand, resting his elbow on the arm of the chair, hiding his eyes from her entirely. A long sniff pulled violently at her heart and told her all she needed to know.

She was on her feet, walking towards him, pushing his hand away and making eye contact with him for the first time in hours. She crawled into his lap, sitting there draped across him like a small child comforting someone much larger. She rested her cheek firmly against his chest, arms wrapped around him and holding him so tightly that she began to lose feeling in her own limbs. She loosened her grip after a while, the tingling in her fingers making her uncomfortable.

He had run a hand up to pet her hair gently, another was resting on her knee as if holding her there against him. She hoped that he had stopped crying although there was no way for her to tell really. Nothing but the stillness of his chest. She heard the echo of her own heartbeat, pounding through him where she pressed her heart against his chest. It seemed right, somehow, although it also felt as if it shouldn’t feel so right.

Her head felt muzzed again, so she decided to give up that train of thought and close her eyes. She settled into him, inhaling the scent of him, and feeling herself relax. She was asleep in no time.

“Slayer,” he whispered against her hair. “Oh, Buffy.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FINALLY FINISHED THIS OFF. PARTY. There is a half-finished Part III on my hard drive, to come.

He discovered that if he took her out into the middle of the street, she would still fight. Which was helpful, since he still had to go out and scavenge food, and help whatever poor sad souls he could find who were still themselves. He’d figured out a while back that half of the people now were imprinted with some sort of fighting skills that were almost as good as Slayer strength. Almost, but not quite. And if anybody knew how to handle Slayers it was the two of them.

Then again, he hated taking her out and setting her loose, using her as a distraction while he did whatever bit of work he had set out to do. It seemed cheap, and horrified him. Particularly today, when she had nearly had her arm slashed off by one of the Butchers with a sharp piece of glass.

“Sh, sh, sh, sh,” he cooed softly at the confused and infantile Slayer.

“It hurts.”

He was so often forcibly reminded of the strange observations the Buffybot made. He found himself explaining things to her as if she were that long forgiven indiscretion from their past.

“It’ll be all right, love,” he said, herding her through the front door to their suite and pulling the door shut with a louder than necessary reverberating bang. It was nice to have that sense that you were safely locked away, even if it was entirely false. “I’ll take care of you.”

“It hurts,” she said again, mystified and holding her profusely bleeding arm out to him.

“Here,” he said, dropping the toilet seat with another bang and pointing to it as he fumbled around with Buffy’s Slayer kit. She had kept it in impeccably catalogued and collected order. It was a shambles now. Bandages trailed every which way out of the thing. “Sit,” he said. She sat obediently.

He turned back from the bag, bandage, alcohol and scissors in hand. “All right, love. Let’s get you cleaned up.”

He took her hand in his and pulled her arm out towards him, her face contorting slightly as she sucked a breath in between her teeth. He ran his tongue across the long flowing drips of blood that were dribbling across her arm, slurping up every last drop before moving to the wound itself and sucking at it lightly.

When he looked up into her face--her trusting, innocent, captivated face--he pulled his mouth away, flooded by guilt. Half the time he found he hated himself now. There were things he couldn’t reconcile. Being so near to her, so engulfed in her scent and her presence and her warmth--it was hard to adjust to the fact that she wasn’t really here anymore. It was hard to come to terms with the fact that nothing he could do could get her to snap out of it. Buffy was gone.

He dropped his eyes and made a show off fussing with the bottle of rubbing alcohol before he took her by the arm and pulled her to the tub. She was already bleeding again. Really, this sort of wound needed stitches but he didn’t trust himself with that level of medical attention. Not with all that blood. He’d just have to disinfect it, wrap it up, and wait for Slayer healing to do the rest. He hoped that woman and her two kids had gotten away all right. As he poured the stinging liquid over his Slayer’s arm, he ruminated on the faces of the people he was trying to help when Buffy had cried out in pain. He had instinctively rushed to her side, taking out the Butcher that was giving her so much trouble and two others with it before hauling her up and dragging her back to the hotel suite. He did honestly hope that they’d made it somewhere. But they were probably hit a mile down the road and wiped. They all seemed to get wiped no matter how hard he tried.

“Ow,” she said finally.

“Sorry.” He stopped pouring the alcohol over her arm and recapped the bottle, setting it on the messy counter before he came back to her and blew across her arm. Goosebumps raised along her flesh as the alcohol dried across her skin. The wound was beginning to bleed again.

“Here, love,” he said. “Hold that.” She dutifully held down the end of the cotton bandage as he began to wrap it around her arm. He wrapped and wrapped until there were at least seven layers of white fluff on top of her wound. He hoped that would be enough. They were running short on bandages. He cut it and tied it off. “All right. You can let go now.” She did so.  
With a heavy sigh he walked out into the room, sucking his teeth and sitting heavily on the bed. She followed him, standing in front of him obediently as if waiting for instruction. Face blank, body blank (he never would have said a body could be blank, but it was). There was a 7/8ths empty bottle of whiskey on the floor by the nightstand. He reached for it rather than acknowledge her presence. She’d settle somewhere. She always did.  
He opened it, taking a long swig. 15/16ths empty now. Oughta save some.  
She wrapped her hand around the neck of the bottle, startling his attention to her face. She pulled the liquor away, setting it with careful reverence on the bedside table.  
Then she crawled into his lap, arms wrapped around his chest, legs splayed over his. “Don’t be sad,” she said, nestling her head against his shoulder like a kitten.  
He didn’t let himself hold her. This wasn’t her. It would be wrong. Incorrect. Completely not right. He forced his hands to stay flat on the bed.  
But she smelled like Buffy, her hair silky and shining against his cheek where she had nestled her head on his shoulder. She felt like Buffy--just a little too warm, and just the right size. She was Buffy, here, beside him, precious and vital. And yet she wasn’t. She wasn’t.  
His arms circled her waist. There wasn’t enough liquor left in the state of Louisiana to deal with this.

*

“Slayer!” he cried. She’d been hit again--not with fists or knives, but by whatever the hell it was that did things to brains.

Buffy screamed, fell to the ground, curled herself into a ball. Was she hurt? Spike took out the Butchers with ease, snapping a neck and cracking an arm. Both of his opponents crumpled. Buffy just tightened herself like a clam slamming shut.

“Buffy, love—?” He held a hand down to her but she didn’t move. He tried to lift her but she was immobile, uncooperative, as much dead weight as a boulder.

“Come on,” he said, “let’s get out of the open. It’s all right, love, it’s all right,” he cooed, hand on her shoulder. She shivered, but her grip on her own knees loosened. She glanced at his face and then snapped her eyes shut quickly with a small squeal. But she stood and she let him lead her away, breathing heavily through her nose in a deep pattern, as if trying to calm herself. What the hell was going on?

When they were back in their little room, he went to her, searching for wounds. Her eyes were hard and angry--that’s what stopped him short. This wasn’t the shell he had taken out to battle.

“Buffy?”

“Who is Buffy!” she burst out. “ _Who_ is this Buffy? Some Whore of Babylon, obviously, to sleep with the likes of—”

“Woah, uh, okay. What’s your name, love?”

“You’re Satan,” she mumbled. “You’re Satan--with the blood of the innocent on your lips!--and this is Hell and I won’t talk to you. I won’t talk to you. My mama told me not to talk to you.”

She huddled herself into one corner and refused to look at him, as if his eyes would somehow bewitch her. Spike wiped his mouth on the back of his hand, realizing what a mess he must be. He washed up, trying to steady his shaking hands, before he settled himself into the armchair and waited, half-sleeping, half trying desperately not to move to spook the girl into something rash. She was obviously out of her mind. What a new meaning _that_ phrase had.

Around daybreak, when it seemed she couldn’t bear it anymore, she crawled into bed and wrapped herself under all the covers, despite the heat, like they would keep her from the Devil. She slept.

The screaming was unbearable, but there it was. The girl thrashed around on the bed, swallowed by covers, drowning. Spike rushed to her, untangling her limbs from the offending sheets and trying to dig her out of the bed.

When she was free she stilled, before noticing Spike’s hand on her arm and ripping it away.

“The Lord is judging me,” she drawled. “Jesus, Jesus.” She trailed off into incoherence.

“Is it the dreams?”

“Demonic dreams. Dreams from Hell. What did I do, Lord?” she entreated the ceiling. “Tell me what I’ve done to bring such punishment upon myself!”

There was no answer. She wept softly.

She was gone when he woke again at nightfall.

His chest constricted, in a panic. God, where the hell had the crazy girl hared off to? He drew a deep breath into his lungs and held it there to steady his nerves. She’d be back, no doubt. Back or dead or wiped clean again.

Maybe he should go after her after all.

*

He found her not far away. She was on the ground, unconscious, a trail of drool sticky and pooling on the ground. Carefully, not wanting to get staked if the religious freak was still in her head, he picked her up and tossed her over his shoulder. Her arms swayed down, brushing at his ass. If _only_.

He settled her into his armchair, waiting for her to wake. She didn’t stir. He wiped the spit and dirt from her face. She was a right mess. But he felt for a pulse and she was alive. That was something, anyway. He wondered what sort of mess her brain would be in when she opened her eyes. If she ever did again.

Hours passed before she stirred, and even then she didn’t wake. It was night again before she blinked awake, pulling him into focus.

“Who are you?” she said, groggily. “Where am I?”

She rubbed at her eyes, pausing instantly when she caught a glimpse of her hand.

“What’s this! _What’s this? Where am I?_ ” she screamed. “ _What_ am I? A woman? I’m a woman now!” 

She stood, going to claw his eyes, her body clumsy as if attempting to adopt a fighting style it _presumed_ was natural to girls but had no idea how to do it. Whoever this was would have been better off just trying to take a swing at Spike’s jaw.

Spike caught her wrists and held her tightly with one hand.

“Calm down!” he said. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

She wailed, a long deep tone of despair. It hurt his ears to hear; hurt his heart.

“What’s your name, love?”

“Love!? Don’t you ‘love’ me, you homo. I’m not into that sort of shit.”

Spike rolled his eyes. Great. Just what he needed. Another crazy person in his girl’s body. He dragged her by the wrists over to her weapons kit and tied her easily with a bit of rope. Hilarious, really. If this guy(?) had even _tried_ to escape he could’ve overpowered Spike in a heartbeat with all that Slayer strength. But the simple fact that he was in a girl’s body had sapped him of every bit of intention.

She kicked weakly at Spike’s shins.

“Ow!” he said, at the sharp pain. “For fuck’s sake, calm down!”

“I can’t live like this. Like some… some… _woman_. Weak and mewling and miniature.”

“Oh, love,” Spike said, voice resonant and purposefully sexual. “If only you’d given my girl a chance. You might not be so averse to living in _that_ body.”

She began to thrash but he subdued her easily. He tossed her onto the bed, wild fear shining in her eyes that lanced straight through him, but he just tied her ankles with as little resistance as he had tied her wrists.

Just before dawn, still trussed up like a hog, he toted the Buffy-man out to the fountain in the courtyard and propped her back against the wall.

“You wait there,” he said. “And don’t hurt the lady you’re borrowing; I’m quite fond of her. I’ll be back for you in a few hours and by all that’s unholy I do hope you’re gone out of her head by then.”

*

“Well, now,” Spike said, looking down at whoever was in Buffy’s head this time. “Good evening, love. Who’ve we got tonight?”

The girl blinked, staring hard up at his face in the darkness. “Why am I all tied up? Are you, like, an axe-murderer?”

“Ah, no. Axes aren’t my style.”

“Box-cutter murderer? Rope? Plain old knife? I always thought a cheese grater would make a really good weapon myself—”

“None of the above,” he said. “If I untie you, are you going to fuck me up?”

“Don’t plan on it, no,” she said. “Can’t make too many promises until I know what the fuck’s going on.”

“Big whooshy brain waves erasing the whole world. Hit my girl here a few weeks ago. You happen to be occupying her body at the moment. I prefer to keep it in good working order for when she comes back.”

“Oh. Well, sure. I’ll, you know. Not fuck it up, or whatever.”

She leaned forward and he reached around behind to untie the ropes. No good cutting them--rope was a finite resource unless he dared venture down to the docks again.

She shook out her hands with elaborate flapping noises, rubbing at her wrists to restore circulation before climbing laboriously to her feet. Spike held a hand down to her and she took it, pulling on him to keep her balance as she rose. “Hey, woah,” she said when she was upright. “I’m tiny this time.”

“This time? How many times you done this?”

“I dunno, two? Before now I mean. Oh,” she said, shaking his hand still held in her own. “I’m Abby, by the way.”

“Spike,” he said.

She made a face, brow quirked incredulously.

“Well, that’s what they call me anyway. So it’ll do. If you’d like to,” he motioned to the open door of the hotel room.

“Oh, yeah, of course,” she said. “Is it, like, I don’t know, all boxed up and stuff? Like the whatever-waves can’t get in?”

“We did the best we could.”

“How’d she get wiped then?”

“Hit on patrol.”

“....... I just won’t ask.”

“Look,” he said as Abby stepped over the threshold and looked around at the terrific mess with a slight but permanent expression of disgust. “I need to go out for a bit, but you make yourself comfortable and don’t haul ass off to Texas, or what have you, because it’s just as bad there.”

She shrugged. “Sure.”

“Anyway, we’re out of your food, and I’m hungry too.”

“What, you don’t eat food?”

“Oh, for god’s sake,” he mumbled to himself. “I’m a vampire,” he gestured to himself and drawled in a half-sing-song, as if annoyed that he was explaining something that should be common knowledge, “it’s a thing. Don’t freak out. I’ve got to go out and eat, but I’ll be back soon. With some, you know,” he said, wiggling his fingers around in front of him, “stuff, for you. To eat too. Not blood stuff, Buffy--I mean, human-food.”

“Well, all right,” she said with a short laugh. “Crazier things have happened to me.”

With a jolt, Spike realized he could like this girl, and he sucked in a breath at the thought. He didn’t want to like her. It was easy to steward her, to shepherd this new consciousness while he waited, waited, waited for Buffy somehow to look back at him from out of her own eyes. Liking the interlopers wasn’t part of the deal.

He didn’t come back until daybreak and she was out like a light, not even stirring when he walked through the door. Well, that was fine. All well and good. He loaded the fridge with his pilfered treasures.

It must have been around noon when the sound of crashing furniture jolted him awake. Fists at the ready, he stared groggily around.

“Sorry! Sorry!” the girl cried, extricating herself from the wreckage of the desk. “I didn’t mean to! I didn’t… but _Jesus_ , your girl is strong, isn’t she?”

“She’s the Vampire Slayer,” he said with a rueful grin.

“She’s the… wait… aren’t you a vampire?”

“I am.”

“And she’s something called a Vampire Slayer?”

“She is.”

“That’s fucked up man,” Abby said with a sly grin.

“That has been noted, yes.”

“God,” she said, dropping the subject and launching a punch through the air, voice not quite right. Not quite Buffy. Buffy but not her. “This is _amazing_. Is everyone like this?”

“What do you mean?”

“Does everyone feel like they could knock a hole in a brick wall with their fist?”

“Ah,” he said. “No. Why would they?”

“I wouldn’t know. I’ve been stuck in the hospital half my life. _God_ ,” she said again, hopping up and down like a rabbit once, twice. “Can you _believe_ it?”

She did an elaborate and sloppy jump kick that left a dent high high up on the wall.

“Whoops. There goes your deposit.”

Spike grinned despite himself.

“What was her name?”

“Buffy,” he said, choking on the word. “Her name was Buffy Summers.”

“Oh, well, I’m Abby. I think I told you that already. Abigail Butler. Not a glamorous name, but eh.”

“It’s nice to meet you again, Abby.”

She smiled, and Buffy nearly shone through. He turned from her.

“Is this like a fight-y thing?”

“What?”

“A Slayer. Is that why I feel like I could crush a man’s skull between my hands without even trying?”

“I imagine that’s why, yes.”

“She’s not very muscle-y.”

“No.”

“Are you all right?”

“No. But give me a minute.”

She tried not to bother him for a while. A while turned into hours. Hours turned into days. One day at dawn he strolled back in and started talking to her like they were old pals.

“The fighting should come back to you. I mean, you’ll pick it up from the… the Slayerness. Whatever all the hell it is. It seems to come with the body.”

“That’s interesting,” Abby said, her attention immediately arrested by his words.

“What?”

“That it comes with the body and not the personality. The brain, or whatever.”

“We’d call that ‘the soul’ in our line of work.”

“The soul. Souls are a thing? For real? They’re like a big deal right?”

He tittered. “You could say that.”

“So if it was so wrapped up in identity, you’d think once she--once Buffy?” He nodded. “Once Buffy wasn’t in here anymore, you’d think this body would stop being the Slayer. That’s fascinating metaphysics. It implies something about the mechanics of the magic that makes the system run.”

Spike narrowed his eyes. “Are you _sure_ you’ve never heard of this stuff before?”

“Oh, me? Oh, no. I just read a lot. Nothing better to do.”

He took her out that week, every night, letting her try out Slayer skills while she crowed like Mary Martin’s Peter Pan when she did things that Spike considered so small as to be irrelevant. More often than not they stumbled back to the room laughing hysterically. He hadn’t laughed in months. It was a good feeling.

“Hm,” Spike hummed as he investigated the fridge. “We’ll have to go on a run soon.”

“I mean, you can drink _mine_ if you’re out.”

“No, love, I don’t think I can.”

“Is there something weird about it? Like, Slayer blood or whatever. I mean does it do something to vampires?”

“Nothing fatal.”

“Oh,” Abby said. “So something sexy then.”

He nearly choked.

“Sure,” she said. “Of course it would be something sexy. I’d be down with that,” she said. “If you were, anyway.”

“That’s all right,” he said. “I can get some blood. There’s plenty blood out there to get.”

She looked crestfallen, and it was hard to see such an expression on that face. But it wasn’t _her_. It was hard to remember that sometimes.

One time, stumbling back into the room from a particularly intense patrol, she captured him against the wall and kissed him soundly, lips bruising, teeth scraping, her hands begging for purchase under his clothing.

He leaned into her--the smell of her, _god_. But when he opened his eyes, he remembered.

“No,” he cried, hands firmly on her shoulders, holding her back. “No,” he said more softly. “I’m sorry, Abby. You’re a doll. But I can’t. Not this way. Not with… with _her_ like this. With you in there. Where you are.”

Abby stepped back, studying his face. “What did you do to her?” she said, uncannily perceptive. “You hurt her, didn’t you?”

“That was a long time ago,” he said. “I’ve changed.”

“But you won’t do it again. And me in here and not her--you think that’d be… you think that’d be rape.”

That wry little smile--the one that bordered on manic. “Too close for comfort, love. You’re not her.”

“Exactly—”

“But you look just like her. Smell like her. When we go out fighting, you move like her. But not in here. Not now. And that wouldn’t be fair to you, for me to do that. Not to you, or to her either.”

She was silent for a long while. “What if she never comes back?”

He smiled then, sad, but for real. “Well, I’ve dealt with that before too. But we always seem to find each other somehow.”

Abby stilled, folding her legs up in front of her on the bed and grabbing her knees.

“Wait,” she said. “How many times have you guys come back from the dead?”

He thought about it. “Me, twice--vampire, of course. That counts as one,” he said, lighting a dented, pilfered cigarette and taking a long draw. “Then I died saving the world once,” he talked around the paper and tobacco dangling from his lip. “Came back from that too. Now that one hurt.”

Abby shook her head, clearing it of all the questions that brought up so she could find the one she wanted. “What about her?” she gestured to her own temple like she was pointing a gun, pulling the trigger of her thumb with a dramatic “pew!”

“Ah, now that one’s arguable. See when a Slayer dies another one rises—”

“You’ve told me this story, like, I don’t know, fifty times.”

“Hang on to your knickers, love, I’m getting to it. See, she died once--drowned or summat--but her pals brought her back. Another Slayer rose, then. But she--Buffy, I mean--she died again a few years later. Saving the world like a crazy.”

“Did _that_ hurt?”

“I imagine so, yep. Her friends brought her back again. Bit more complicated than, you know, CPR or what-have-you. Black magic blah-dee-blah-blah-blah. And then there’s that time she got shot—”

“Was this all before or after you died?”

“Oh, well, after, yeah? I was there. Undead and all.”

“I mean the second time.”

“Before,” the word was small and soft and he wouldn’t look at her anymore.

“And what you did to her--how you hurt her.”

“That was before too, yeah.”

“I mean, technically the world’s already ended,” she said, taking a deep breath and letting it out in a sigh. “So it’s not like there’s a premium on time. If you want to… you know… tell me the whole story and stop being a vague asshole.”

“For a girl who spent her life in the hospital you’re quite a card,” he said, tamping the half-smoked fag out in the ashtray on the bedside table.

“I said I was an invalid, not a prude. What the hell?”

“Did I call you a prude? Where do you swear like a sailor in a hospital?”

“In bed, curled up in a ball after you’ve had three feet of your small intestine resected.”

“What’s ‘resected?’”

“Mr. ‘I’m a Victorian Gentleman so I Should Know Perfect Latin’ can’t figure that one out?”

He shrugged; Latin hadn’t been a priority for a hundred years.

Abby sighed. “It means they sliced open my belly and cut out three feet of my bowels. Look I’ll—” she reached for the hem of her shirt but stopped halfway through pulling it up. “Well… this is usually where I show you my giant scar.”

Spike leaned against his knee, forearm propped carelessly up, looking artfully and artlessly tousled at the same time. That was an inborn talent, that. He studied the girl’s face--Buffy but not Buffy at all. It was harder to watch this one, so kind and fierce, and so completely herself. Not one you could throw out in the courtyard and wait for the pulses cascading over the surface of the earth to wipe her clean again.

“I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours,” he said.

She rested her chin on the knuckles of her curled fist. “Sure,” she said. “I’ll go--mine’s pretty short.”

And so they talked and talked. They talked for hours. Just the sounds of their voices floating around, mingling in the room. Stories upon stories. Stories were all that were left, really. Stories were the sum parts of the whole, clawing desperately at the scraps of identity that were left in this world. They talked until their throats were raw and their voices cracked.

He told her all about his life, his death, his loves and hates, his violence and harm, his death, his life again. She was a marvelous audience, gasping at the right times, laughing at the right times, asking just the right questions. She absorbed his tale like a sponge; like someone who has only ever lived through stories. And that suited him perfectly. He always did love a captive audience.

“Well,” she said when he was done, tears dripping freely but silently from her eyes. So weird to see, that. “I’ll stop trying to fuck you now. But… well, I don’t mean to butt in. But would it be all right if you just… um. Would it be all right if… if you just held me?”

“Yeah, love,” he said with a sad little smile. “That’d be fine.” And he opened his arms and she fit against him just right.

*

Abby saw it coming from the end of the street, dropping people in their tracks. (Could you call them people anymore? Was that a word that applied?)

“Spike!”

But he just kept swinging away. The alleyway or the vampire? Not a hard choice--alleyways were shitty protection from crazyass brain waves.

“Spike, _dude_ , watch the fuck out!” Abby called again. “ _Spike_ ,” she tried to block him, she _tried_. But, even as her arm wrapped around his neck from the side, hauling him to the ground, the wave swept over them. The two of them, their opponents, the victims they were trying to protect. Everyone went down, dazed, lumpy in the head.

The whole city went quiet.


End file.
